USA - Barbra Streisand recently returned for a twenty-date tour across North America with guests Il Divo, the pop opera quartet, marking the singer's first live concert appearances since 1999. The vocal microphone of choice for the diva and Il Divo was the Sennheiser SKM 5200 wireless handheld fitted with Neumann's KK 105 S capsule, while the 'popera' foursome also made use of Sennheiser's 3000 Series RF personal monitors.

FOH engineer and sound designer Bruce Jackson, who has mixed Streisand live for many years, reports that the Sennheiser/Neumann vocal mic won a shootout against competing systems. "I listened and compared it against some other mics that I was interested in," he says. "It worked out well."

Jackson, who was once front-of-house engineer for Elvis Presley and, for many years, Bruce Springsteen, was especially impressed with the strong RF performance of the Sennheiser/Neumann mics, which were overseen on the tour by Aaron Foye. "I would take her mic and I'd wander the arena with that vocal mic and do my listening tests," says Jackson. "I'd be in elevators and moving around the place and, where most mics would drop out, the Sennheiser just kept on going."

Sennheiser microphones were also in use throughout the percussion section of the orchestra, with four Evolution Series e609s on John 'JR' Robinson's drum kit, plus a pair of MD 421s on vibes and three MD 441s on tympani.

(Jim Evans)


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