The big London date for Ross was Wembley Arena, where the in-the-round set resulted in some big changes for the sound engineers. Monitor engineer Rory Madden was situated in the centre of the arena floor, alongside members of the 12-piece band and the circular stage. Marsh had to set up his Midas XL4 console where one would normally expect to find the stage.
"That was the biggest compromise," says Marsh. "The traditional front-of-house position is about five metres away from where the round stage is now. So I am where the stage usually is, and off to one side. With this design, there's no real stereo imaging around the room, so I have to position myself in front of, and listen to, just one speaker hang."
Seven hangs of ElectroVoice X-Line are suspended from the grid above the small circular stage. Two stereo hangs for the longer throws feature, at maximum size, six Xvls and three Xvlt cabinets. There are also two arrays for the shorter throws, the longer of these featuring six Xvlt units, while over the band, there are two hangs, each with eight X-Line compact speakers. Marsh had a small problem when it came to subs.
"There's hardly any room under the stage for the subs. Ideally, we'd have flown them, but the lighting design didn't facilitate this, and, given the regulations for 360º configurations, we couldn't fly the subs high enough to go over the main hangs." So Marsh has fitted four ElectroVoice X-subs under the thrust stage, and made up the difference with six Aura 18" bins which are compact enough to fit under Diana Ross's circular stage.
"This was probably the main reason for choosing EV X-Line for this show, because they are truly full-range enclosures. I can get a tight, warm sound without necessarily having to use a lot of sub-bass. The nature of Diana Ross's material helps us along here; we can get away with less sub-bass by just leaving the X-Line quite open and letting it go all the way down." Marsh mixed the show on a 48-channel Midas XL4, using Klark Teknik Helix and slaves with the Teqsas remote to EQ the system wirelessly, "much appreciated in a 360º configuration".
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
