Category Archives: News

Shure Wireless Systems Help Grammy Performers Hear and Be Heard

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Courtesy of Front Of House Online 

Axient Digital microphone systems and PSM 1000 play key roles in 2018 Grammy telecast

NILES, IL., February 12, 2018—The 60th Annual Grammy Awards, broadcast live on CBS, brought its usual array of mash-ups, tributes, and stunning performances of the best in music to New York’s Madison Square Garden and a global television audience. Shure wireless microphones, in-ear monitor systems, and hardwired mics played a key role in ensuring flawless audio throughout the three-hour celebration of Music’s Biggest Night.

A seasoned crew of professionals led by Audio Coordinator Michael Abbott teamed up to meet the show’s substantial sound requirements, with Firehouse Productions supplying the audio, RF and communications gear, while Music Mix Mobile brought two full recording trucks for 5.1 surround music mixing. As always, the Grammy team encouraged all performers to use their preferred vocal microphones.

To meet the challenge of delivering enough channels for the ambitious, dual-stage production, RF Coordinator Vinny Siniscal used Shure Axient Digital as the default wireless microphones for artists on stage, as its spectral efficiency permits more channels in less available spectrum than any analog system. The other key need is for highly reliable in-ear monitoring. As has become common practice on all major award shows, 24 channels of Shure PSM 1000 delivered flawless sound to the performers on both stages.

The night’s big winner, Bruno Mars, used an Axient Digital handheld for his vocals. So did Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee in their performance of “Despacito.” The system was also central to several of the show’s signature events, including a Beta 58A version for the Chuck Berry tribute by Gary Clark Jr. and SM58 capsules for “Tears in Heaven,” featuring Maren Morris, Brothers Osborne and Eric Church.

“This was the first live to air show we’ve done with all digital mics, and this is a high-channel count show. I like the way Axient Digital performs; the RF performance is solid,” reports Siniscal. “I especially love the rechargeable battery technology. The long battery life and ability to monitor the battery status gives us confidence throughout the show.”

One of the night’s biggest highlights was Kesha’s impassioned performance of “Praying,” addressing the issue of sexual abuse in society and the music industry. Kesha used her usual Shure UHF-R handheld wireless, while backing vocalists Andra Day, Cyndi Lauper, Julia Michaels, and Camila Cabello used Axient Digital systems with classic SM58 mics.

Other performers on Axient Digital included Bono, Little Big Town, Childish Gambino, Logic, Shaggy, DJ Khaled, Broadway stars Patti Lupone and Ben Platt, Khalid, Dave Chappelle, Alessia Cara, and SZA.

The Grammy Awards boasts a deep, experienced crew of mix engineers, with Tom Holmes in the main production truck delivering alternating mixes from Eric Schilling and Jon Harris in the M3 trucks. For the live mix inside Madison Square Garden, Ron Reaves handled the music mixes, with Mikael Stewart in his accustomed role as program mixer. The two stages each hosted one monitor console, with those mixes performed by Tom Pesa and Simon Welch, who was pleased to see the PSM 1000 in place.

“The PSM 1000 RF front end is the best in the industry; you know when you are driving it hard you won’t have any issues,” notes Welch. “The Cue Mode feature is invaluable for run-and-gun shows like this.”

Shure’s dominance in wireless even extended outside Madison Square Garden. All wireless microphones used on the red carpet for pre-broadcast interviews were UHF-R with KSM9 mic capsules, and Axient was U2’s choice for vocals, bass and guitar wireless in their pre-taped performance at the Statue of Liberty.

“We knew going into the Grammys this year was going to be challenging, especially trying to coordinate wireless frequencies in one of the biggest cities in the world,” says Shure Artist Relations Manager Cory Lorentz. “Shure wireless, especially Axient Digital, played a much larger role in this year’s show, and we were ecstatic to see the huge channel count on hand to make such a large production run smoothly.”

Behind the Scenes of the Grammys’ Sound

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Courtesy of Anthony Savona via Pro Sound News

It takes a battalion of audio professionals to make sure Music’s Big Night goes off without a hitch.

During sporting events, the prestigious Madison Club at Madison Square Garden gives season ticket holders all the amenities of a luxury box experience, including a large lounge, a private club bar, and personalized suite-level seats. However, for music events, the space is used as Backstage and is blocked from the action by giant black curtains, so while patrons can’t take advantage of it, enterprising sound crews can. For the 60th annual GRAMMYs, held in New York City for the first time in 15 years, the Madison Club was turned into Sound Central, holding monitor mixers, Pro Tools rigs, cabling, and all communications hardware for the mega-event.

“Instead of trying to smash the volume of gear that we have [in the Madison Club] backstage—with all the risers moving around and trying to stick us underneath something—we took over the entire Club, which is about 120 feet wide by 20 feet deep,” states Firehouse Productions Project Manager/Sound System Designer Mark Dittmar (Red Hook, NY). “It allowed us to get everything that we want to do in neat 11-foot wide sections, and it gave us an awesome work area. We’re out of everybody’s way. It is longer cable runs for us, but we build infinitely faster because you can do it once and not have to touch it or move it again.”

For the GRAMMYs, the Madison Club’s two coat-check rooms, at opposite ends of the club, each housed an Avid Pro Tools rig, with the one on the left handling sound for stage left and the one on the right handling stage right. Next to the left Pro Tools rig were all the hardwired communications for the show, followed next by the wireless communications; able to accommodate up to 1,024 channels, the team (thankfully) used about 60 channels going to 300 destinations.

And in a space as dense as the Garden in NYC, there was more to worry about than sharing frequencies. Dittmar explains, “The problem the wireless communications team had to deal with from the start is, when you turn on two frequencies, harmonics are made into modulation distortion, which creates other problems. So for every channel, we have to calculate out the third harmonic to keep some space between frequencies—100 transmitters could have 800 harmonics!”

Next to Communications was Split World, where all audio came in and went out, with feeds coming in/going out for front of house, music trucks and the broadcast trucks. “It all comes in here via fiber,” says Dittmar, “It all gets split up via analog and it all gets shipped out via fiber. That gives us a heck of a lot of redundancy, so the single points of failure don’t take you down.”

Across the way sat a rack of preamps for the music, and the person responsible for running them, engineer [and longtime PSN reviewer] Russ Long. “We have over 200 inputs coming in off the stage,” says Long, “so I set those levels right when they come in off the stage. The conversion from analog to digital happens here, as well.

“We have two MADI streams that feed the two mix trucks, so both music mixers [John Harris and Eric Schilling] have access to all the inputs. We use the Grace m802 preamps for mic level inputs, and then we use the Aphex for line-level inputs, which are the wireless RF and the Pro Tools outputs.”

Rounding out the space were places for guest monitors mixers, including those working for Pink, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars and Elton John.

Down in Front

Far below the Madison Club at front of house was a sound reinforcement system with a Yamaha PM10 production console and DiGiCo SD7 music mixer at its nucleus. The house, filled for the evening with Recording Academy members and golden-eared producers, had sound provided by Firehouse Productions, which provided JBL VTX Series technology, including V25s for the mains, S28s in cardioid arrays for the subs and G28 subs on the ground.

The updated Garden added a new wrinkle to the sound system: a lower hanging scoreboard that had to be accommodated. “The scoreboard here is one of the most challenging things to deal with,” says Firehouse’s Dittmar. “That’s a new trim height that is a lot lower, which is why the PA is as wide as it is. But, from an audio standpoint, that makes it an incredibly challenging room to cover without splashing huge amounts off the side of the board, where we have nine delay clusters going around at the upper levels.”

Ron Reaves mixed the PA for the musical acts during the show, which he has done for many past GRAMMYs—experience that came in handy when dealing with marquee-level acts. “A lot of these guys are our friends that I’ve known forever,” he says. “We’re here to help them, so whatever they tell us to do, we do it. I always equate it to producing records: You tell me what you want and I’ll spin the knobs.”

Each act had a representative stay with Reaves at FOH, but he was the only one who worked the board. In addition to each act’s guest, Reaves had additional help from legendary engineer Leslie Ann Jones. “Leslie is the GRAMMY Award Telecast Advisor of House Audio,” says Reaves. “If we have some overzealous guests, she runs interference for us. She has incredible ears; she’s the volume police. She is an integral part in this team.”

Truck Stop

Outside the Garden, up against the famed arena, were the large Denali broadcast trucks and two smaller Music Mix Mobile (M3) trucks. Each M3 truck has an identical interior setup and its own music mixer, with Eric Schilling in one and John Harris in the other. The two mixers divided the evening’s music performances between themselves, as they recorded the rehearsals; brought in the artist or a representative to go over the rehearsal and create snapshots for the show; and later mixed the performances during the live broadcast.

The saved settings from the rehearsals provided a jumping off point for the live show. “I’ve got the static saved,” says Harris, “and I can get the song to where everybody likes it. I go to the top and say, ‘Well, this starts here with that guy up, the guitars panned over there and this guy over here,’ and that’s where I’m starting out. That’s where I’ll save it.”

But even with the start saved, there are many more moves to consider once a song begins. “We have notes,” says Harris, “but it’s all pretty analog notes—even with all of this technology.”

All Ears on You

As one can imagine, there is a lot of pressure when running sound for a room filled with top-level audio professionals. “This is probably the most heavily scrutinized I am all year because everybody here is either a record producer or engineer, and they are all listening to all the little subtleties,” states FOH mixer and GRAMMY veteran Reaves. “To me, that’s fun!”

Firehouse Productions Tours with Tears for Fears

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A recent article in Pro-Sound Magazine noted that Firehouse Productions was called upon by sound engineer George Squires as he embarked on the recent Tears for Fears Tour in the United States and Europe.

Reprinted here from ProSoundNetwork.com. Click here for original article.

Tears For Fears Squires A New PM10 On Tour

George Squires with his Yamaha PM10 digital audio console.

New York, NY (December 7, 2017)—Eighties pop stalwarts Tears For Fears have a new greatest-hits set out, Rule The World, and a UK arena tour lined up for the spring, building on the momentum of a 29-city US tour they ran through with Hall & Oates this past summer. For all those shows, the band has monitor engineer George Squires on tap, and for the summer journey, he in turn brought along a Yamaha PM10 digital audio console, provided by Firehouse Productions.

Squiers took on the PM10 to ensure he kept moving forward, he said. “Boredom was starting to set in, and I needed a change in my life,” said Squiers. “I was very accustomed to using Yamaha products for so many years, back to the analog days, and the consoles were always consistent and reliable. I think for me, the decision to try out the PM10 was the Yamaha collaboration with Rupert Neve Designs that was very attractive…. The SILK function inspired me and the fact that it was signed off by Rupert Neve himself, added to the smile on my face.”

Squiers notes that along with the SILK function, he likes the fact that all of the Rupert Neve Designs-inspired Dynamics are standard on the PM10: “No need for a Waves rack next to my console, plug-ins, or USB sticks; I have access to amazing Dynamics onboard, and no extra gear rental fees. The on-board effects are fantastic as well.”

Firehouse Productions www.firehouseproductions.com

Yamaha Corporation of America (YCA) www.yamahaproaudio.com

Firehouse Productions Sets Live Sound Ablaze with Dante Audio-over-IP Networking

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Live sound production company also discovers newfound flexibility, scalability and efficiency using Dante for concerts, TV broadcasts and corporate events

PORTLAND, OR,  – As a sound production company specializing in live events, Firehouse Productions is regularly entrusted with the design, operation and management of complex audio network infrastructures for concerts, TV shows and special events. As more venues and facilities gradually transition from legacy analog systems to the network, Firehouse Productions has found significant value in the excellent sound quality, quick deployment and low total cost of ownership of Audinate’s Dante audio-over-IP networking.

Over the years, the fast-growing company—with offices and warehouses in New York and Las Vegas—has provided sound production systems and support services to major rock concert tours by Coldplay, Radiohead, Hall & Oates, Florence and The Machine, Tears for Fears, Nine Inch Nails, Lorde, Peter Gabriel, Sting and David Gray, among other A-listers. Their technicians are also integrally involved with sound production for special live events, such as the 2017 International Indian Film Festival, which was held in mid-July at the MetLife Stadium as well as live events for corporations including Macy’s, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Biogen and Wyndham.

In television, the company has played a key role in producing audio for live broadcasts, such as The Tony Awards, NBC’s The Wiz and Peter Pan, The Daily Show, In Performance at the White House, the iHeart Music Festival and Global Citizen Festival.

“Whether they take place in a stadium or a studio, these events all have one thing in common—they are live. There are no do-overs to get them right,” said Luis Espinal, Senior RF/PL Technician for Firehouse Productions. “As we move toward more networked architectures, Dante brings the reliability, routing flexibility and capacity we need to do it right the first time.”

In essence, Firehouse Productions’ mission is to pick up sound from “Point A” to deliver it to “Point B.” But considering how complex and multi-layered today’s audio network architecture has become—encompassing microphones, intercoms, stage monitors, front of house mixing, PA systems, broadcast trucks and more—Espinal found it challenging to deal with the growing array of snakes and cables, connectors, amp racks, audio protocols and other systems that have to interface together.

“Given the complexity of today’s networked live sound infrastructures, it’s not enough to just bring in trusted brands of legacy audio gear,” said Espinal. “If the third-party audio devices don’t network together seamlessly, with uncompromised quality, low latency and spot-on timing, even the slightest glitch could detract from the viewer experience. Dante solves these problems, and now serves as the backbone of our service. With Dante, we can customize networks of third-party audio gear to meet the demands of even the most ambitious live events.”

At the heart of Firehouse Productions’ Dante networking solution are several Yamaha mixing consoles, including the MP10, CL5 and Q1; a Lab.gruppen Lake LM44 digital audio system processor; and several Focusrite RedNet I/O interfaces for conversions between Dante and MADI or AES10 environments. All Dante audio traffic, data, control and other functions are natively supported over a Cisco SG550X-24P Layer 3 Switch configured within multiple VLANs. Espinal also points to the value of Dante Virtual Soundcard to record and process multichannel audio from laptops.

“For a very advanced show, we need an integrated solution that’s manageable from end to end from a single interface,” Espinal said. “Dante is the only solution I’ve found that makes it easy to integrate so many third-party audio devices together. At every event, we can count on Dante to save us hours of work that were previously spent running cables and setting up patch panels. It’s smart enough to acknowledge devices or systems as they’re added to the network, and to automatically failover to the redundant path when a technical issue arises that could derail the show.”

Because Dante is an Ethernet-based, bi-directional network solution, it’s easy and logical to set-up a number of signal paths compared to the traditional method of running and patching cables between various points. “Scalability is important to us because we serve projects from simple to elaborate,” Espinal said. “It’s also very flexible to modify the signal routing without having to physically move or rearrange any components, all of which yields considerable savings of time and labor, especially on complex, high-profile events.

“Dante is not just a great solution for concerts, or corporate events, or broadcasting,” Espinal concluded. “It’s a global solution that can be easily adapted to the project’s unique technical requirements, with remarkably fast set-up times, low latency and clean sound quality.”

Original article appeared on Audinate.com. 

JBL by HARMAN Delivers Pristine Live Sound at the 2016 Tony Awards

News

Courtesy of JBL Professional 

NEW YORK CITY— Firehouse Productions deployed a JBL by HARMAN VT4886 system to provide the highest quality live sound at the 2016 Tony Awards. The 70th annual Tony Awards was broadcasted live from the historic Beacon Theatre in New York City, and Firehouse Productions selected the VT4886 for its ability to deliver exceptional sound quality with an extremely compact footprint.

Firehouse Productions deployed a JBL by HARMAN VT4886 systemto provide the highest quality live sound at the 2016 Tony Awards. The 70 annual Tony Awards was broadcasted live from the historic Beacon Theatre in New York City, and Firehouse Productions selected the VT4886 for its ability to deliver exceptional sound quality with an extremely compact footprint.

“The JBL VT4886 offers an incredible amount of power and control in a very small package, and I’ve had excellent results with it on numerous live shows,” said Mark Dittmar, Lead Design and Integration Engineer at Firehouse Productions. “At the Beacon Theatre, which is an extremely small venue, size and taking up less space are very important. JBL VT4886 is a spectacular-sounding speaker in a very small package, which is a great combination for a show like the Tony Awards.”

The 2016 Tony Awards ceremony featured energetic performances from the hottest shows on Broadway, including “Hamilton,” “School of Rock,” “She Loves Me” and more. With up to 30 lavalier mics on the stage simultaneously, it was important to manage gain before feedback and make sure the live sound stayed out of the on-air mix. It was equally important to deliver excellent dialogue intelligibility. Finally, it was important for the arrays to take up minimal space and be hidden from the camera sightlines during the broadcast.

“On a television show, we have to keep the PA hidden, but we also need great intelligibility,” said Dittmar. “The VT4886 arrays worked really well and allowed us to place the PA in a space that other arrays wouldn’t fit.”

The subcompact JBL VT4886 features a true 3-way system that is unique to the subcompact category, offering exceptional sound quality and the highest SPL output in its class. The VT4886 also features a low-frequency diffraction absorber that eliminates cavity resonance and cabinet edge diffraction effects, which provided Firehouse with extra control over feedback.

The VT4886 is designed to deliver high-quality reinforcement of music and speech in a wide variety of applications, including concert audio and corporate AV presentations of all types.