Alan Parsons Live Project tours with Alcons
- Details
Meanwhile, professional audio technology has caught up, and so dared Alan Parsons to tour again with his recent album The Secret. PM Blue from Hamburg was responsible for the eight-day tour of the musician through Germany. The lighting concept was realised in cooperation with AVM from Schwanewede.
As to be expected, the requirements for the sound engineering in this case were particularly high, as Timo Hille, junior project manager and audio specialist at PM Blue confirms: "Since Alan Parsons was and still is very successful as a producer and recording engineer, his requirements with regards to the sound quality are particularly high. In addition, musically there’s a lot going on with Alan and his seven-member band; The complex arrangements of the songs, in which many instruments overlap, especially in the low-mid range between 120Hz and 800Hz, demand a good mix on one hand, but also a really high-resolution sound system on the other hand."
Pro-ribbon systems from Alcons Audio were chosen. Thirty LR18 compact mid-size pro-ribbon line array systems were used as main PA, with 12x LR7 micro line-arrays- distributed evenly along the edge of the stage - for the near field. Four RR12 point source array systems were placed at the outer edge of the stage, directly under the main arrays and one RR12 flown left / right were used as out-fill. Nine Alcons BF302 mkII dual 15” subwoofers were placed in the centre as a cardioid sub-array, combined with left and right two 2 BQ211 single 21” subwoofer systems at the outer edge of the stage.
Timo Hille, who accompanied the tour as a PA system technician, was very satisfied with the performance of the Alcons systems: "I had good tools at my disposal to adequately cover the halls. The very high-resolution pro-ribbon tweeters are initially somewhat unfamiliar to many FOH technicians, because of course much more high frequency information can be transmitted cleanly than with conventional compression drivers.”
(Jim Evans)
