From behind the show's Cadac R-type console, FOH engineer Piercarlo Penta explained that Venditti's recent tours have been just him on piano, and a sax player, but to tour with this 'supergroup', "we needed a system able to handle the group's energy, and the Meyer Sound set-up chosen [12 MILO high-power curvilinear array loudspeakers per side and 12 M3D-Subs] has proved a winner. As well as being compact, the MILO enclosures have a really beautiful sound and are very efficient."
While the majority of the indoor arenas are 4,000 to 5,000 seats, the tour kicked off with larger gigs in Turin, Genoa and Milan. For these, RMS brought in part of their M3D line array stock, and Penta used eight M3D and six MILOs per side, plus four additional M3D-Subs. He says: "Giovanni Bugari, a sound designer and SIM operator with Meyer's Italian distributor Grisby Music, did an excellent job of setting up the system and we're still using his idea of curving the floor-installed subs out from the sides towards the centre of the stage." Bugari learned this technique, of carefully spacing subwoofers into a horizontal line array, from Meyer's technical seminar trainer, Mauricio Ramirez.
Although the band uses in-ear monitoring, Venditti himself is using wedges and sidefill systems - two extended range USM-100P self-powered monitors with 15" woofers at the centre of the stage, and two UM-100P wide coverage monitors with 12" woofers on either side. Monitor mixing is handled by Neapolitan Michele Reccia.RMS's Mauro LaFicara assists at the FOH position, working out system configurations for each venue with system tech Umberto Bacchiocchi with the assistance of Meyer Sound MAPP Online acoustical prediction software. LaFicara praised Bugari's fine-tuning of the system, and concludes with praise for the MILO arrays, saying: "I think they're perfectly suited to the job - they're really easy to set up and the details of the music and vocals come out extremely well with this type of music."
