The Hartwall concerts were a one-off event, 50 Cent was not on tour, and assuch his Production called upon Akun Tehdas, Finland's leading equipment rental provider, to supply all of50 Cent's sound requirements. "This was a typical large scale event for us,"said Timo Liski of Akun Tehdas, "that meant 100% attention to detail."
Thecompany had just taken delivery of their brand new J-Series line arraysystem from d&b audiotechnik in Germany. Having already attended theirJ-Series training in the real world environment of Stuttgart's MartinSchleyer Halle, Liski was keen to show Finnish audiences what it could do.
"This was a concert of very high sound levels," he began, "especially in thelow end. We rigged just eight J-Subs a side to provide the kind of powerfullow end this type of act needs. I must confess at first I thought we shouldput in some d&b B2 subwoofers as well, but when you stack the J-Subs fourhigh it takes them down to 30 Hz so there was really no need. There wasdefinitely enough energy, -3dB to the main rig and the engineer Bill Barnettsaid he had lots of head room."
Barnett concurred: "Yeah, with 50 Centthere's a lot of 808 bass sound in there, normally I find I have to pull 50Hz or thereabouts, and I don't recall having to do that in Helsinki. In factLow end was really good, it was rattling anything that was loose, I sawempty coke cans jumping around."
So what was it like using a foreign PAcompany? "It was very much situation normal for me, Akun Tehdas were nodifferent from any other professional audio rental company, they did a greatjob. From that point of view, my requirements aren't great, we carry our ownmicrophones, but that d&b rig they provided was awesome right across theboard."
The Hartwall is relatively small by arena standards. "We rigged ten J8s andtwo J12s a side," said Liski. "The out-fill was nine Q1s at a 45ยบ angle tostage, then four Q7s as a near fill along front stage. The Arena is quitetight vertically, it is just twenty-one metres to the back of the hall butit is very steep. The predictive software for line array configurationproved perfect and the coverage was remarkably uniform. Bill provides a verysolid mix with vocals firmly placed; energy is high, I measured a steady103/104 dBA (Slow) with +4 to +5 dB on the peaks."
"This system was especially good for getting the vocals in the mix"concluded Barnett. "I do like pretty much all line arrays, with one or twoexceptions. They're all good at getting the vocals, but this d&b systemwould have to be one of my favourites."
(Chris Henry)
