The decision to switch DPA was taken by audio consultant John Kriek and sound designer Jeroen ten Brinke, a partner at Audio Design International that provided sound services for the shows.
"I had used DPA microphones in the past and was always impressed by the audio quality they delivered," says Jeroen ten Brinke. "At the end of last year I worked on an All Star show in Amsterdam and that was when I tried DPA d:facto Vocal Microphones for the first time. Even though the mics had a lot of different artists and vocal styles to contend with, they delivered really impressive results in terms of dynamic range, and I was very pleasantly surprised by how good they sounded. This is why we decided to use them for De Toppers concerts - I was confident they would deliver equally good results."
Formed in 2005, De Toppers currently consists of Dutch singers Rene Froger, Gerard Joling and Jeroen van der Boom. In 2009, the group came to the attention of the wider world when they represented The Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Shine. Although they only reached the second semi-final of the show, the Dutch public took the band to its heart and now flocks to see them every year when they play annual concerts in Amsterdam.
For this year's De Toppers concerts, a total of 20 d:facto Vocal Microphones were employed, all of which were supplied by Amptec, DPA's distributor in the Netherlands. The selection included six with wired handles, which were used by the backing singers, and 14 wireless d:factos, teamed with a Shure wireless system, which were used by De Toppers and their on-stage guests.
"De Toppers and their guests, who included artists from all over Europe, needed the ability to move freely around the stage and the wireless d:factos gave them that freedom of movement," John Kriek says. "Other issues we faced were the number of monitors on stage, the tricky nature of the acoustics at the Amsterdam Arena (simply because it's so huge) and the fact that you have big PA systems everywhere. There are not many microphones that can cope with those kind of pressures without giving you feedback problems, but the d:factos were perfect and we had no feedback at all. It just goes to show that quality always shines through."
(Jim Evans)
