Thunder’s head audio engineer Scott Minkley described the event and how the fully programmable Helix and Helix slave units were able to meet the EQ requirements of each act’s FOH engineer with seamless transitions from set to set. "We brought a whole PA system down for the various acts’ engineers to use. The Helix was particularly useful because there were 10 zones of audio and numerous engineers to work with, so the units were definitely put to task and proved themselves extremely versatile. The event took place at the PGA National Resort and Spa in an enormous air-conditioned tent, which measured approximately 300ft by 150ft and held around 2,500 to 3,000 guests."
The system included Nexo Alpha loudspeakers, two Midas XL4s at front-of-house, and two Midas Heritage 3000 desks for monitor mixes. The company used one Helix DN9340 master unit and two DN9344 slave units - taking a total of just four rack spaces.
"The Helix is a simply outstanding equalization system," says Minkley, "both in terms of design and application. The ability to use a parametric EQ for basic system equalization as well as the 31-band graphic equalizer meant the different engineers at the event could dial in their own custom equalization of the rig without affecting the overall system EQ’s primary settings, which we tweaked and delayed with SIA Smaart Live. Essentially this meant that no-one had to compromise on their particular flavour of EQ during the event, be it at setup or at show time. Plus having the delays and the frequency dependant compression in the one unit meant that the Helixes took the place of what would normally be a 20-space drive rack full of EQ’s, compressors and delays and honed it down to six rack spaces."
(Lee Baldock)
