The tour crew at Alexandra Palace (photo: Steve Sroka)
UK - Adlib supplied a Coda sound system, video equipment and crew to the recent UK leg of punk folk singer-songwriter Frank Turner’s on-going world tour. Adlib worked closely with production designer Ali Pike, FOH engineer Luke Buckbee and Johnny Stephenson on monitors.
Taking on the full production designer role was an exciting prospect for Ali Pike who initially chatted with Frank about what he wanted video-wise, and had a very clear overall perspective of what she wanted to create. The focus was to bring something fresh and different to the visual mix.
Assisting Ali to get all the kit and the effects she wanted on the road was Adlib’s Matt Hopwood.
The white backdrop for the lighting and video projections was 18 ft high, and Panasonic RZ21K laser projectors were selected for their power and relatively compact size. These were fitted with short throw lenses and run as an overlaid pair, flown on their own dedicated mid stage truss.
Adlib supplied a fully redundant Catalyst V5 Pro Media server that came complete with 6 channel Active Silicon Camera Inputs. The servers were operated via Ali’s grandMA2 lighting console, where she also added effects and treatments to the content that she had compiled for the show.
Adlib provided six POV cameras, a combination of rackable Marshalls, 2 x CV350 10x zoom ‘block’ and 4 x CV225 ‘lipstick’ units. Three of the lipstick cameras used their standard lenses and one was modified with a fisheye lens.
James Coghlan was the audio systems tech, working with Adlib’s Alan Harrison to ensure that band engineers Luke Buckbee (FOH) and Johnny Stephenson (monitors) had everything they needed.
James had completed a short run with the band earlier in 2018 where Adlib supplied a Coda AiRAY system for some club and academy shows which didn’t have access to a house PA. Luke was so impressed with the Coda that he chose it again for this arena tour and requested James back as systems engineer.
The system comprised of AiRAY and ViRAY supplemented with flown S2-F low frequency extensions along with a broadside array of eight stacks of SCP-F subs on the floor for even sub coverage. Three APS speakers per side were used as in-fills, with four HOPS8’s for front-fills.
In the London gig at Alexandra Palace, a long narrow box of a room, they dispensed with the side hangs and instead used the ViRAY in small ground stacks to fill the sides, then flew the AiRAY as two delay hangs
They used an Adlib fibre control system, with Dante as the main protocol between FOH and stage, and the fibre network also carrying signal to control the amps.
An Outline Newton was utilised as the master console matrix which took in analogue and AES from Luke’s PRO2C FOH console and the DiGiCo SD12 desk doing the support mix. The outputs from the Newton then fed a Lake control system, which fed the amps with both LiNET and an analogue backup.
(Jim Evans)

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