This year's edition, hosted as always by Boston-area native Denis Leary, also featured performances by Jim Norton, Pete Correale, Thomas Dale, Lenny Clarke, Joe Yannetty, and other surprise guests.
The primary challenge for Scott Tkachuk, audio designer and touring operations director for Rainbow, was to create the illusion of an intimate comedy club in a reverberant 7,000-seat arena. To accomplish the feat, Tkachuk and Seth Hager, systems tech, deployed dual hangs of 12-each Meyer Sound Milo line array loudspeakers, with three Mica line array loudspeakers per side under-hung for down-fills. Out-fills were one Milo 120 and five Milo loudspeakers per side, and front-fills were six UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers.
"Vocal intelligibility on the Milos is second to none," says Tkachuk. "They are in your face right up to the nosebleed seats, so a voice sounds the same 200ft away as it does in the front VIP seats."
Low-frequency support for Leary's band was courtesy of a dozen 700-HP subwoofers, and the system wass tied together by a Galileo loudspeaker management system with dual Galileo 616 processors. On stage, comics and musicians heard themselves through 18 MJF-212A stage monitors.
Now in its 16th year, Comics Come Home benefits the Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care, a Boston-based organization that provides comfort, support, and hope to cancer patients during treatments. Rainbow has been providing audio support for the event since its inception.
(Jim Evans)
