"Varanger is literally located on top of the world, it must be the farthest north iLive has traveled," comments °ystein Wierli from XL Audio Norway, who sold the system. "The iLive performed flawlessly, and the entire crew quickly felt comfortable with operating it."
Snow and Fire is a new musical depicting the race by air and land to the North Pole between Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, and Italian aeronautical engineer, Umberto Nobile. A theatre stage filling up an indoor sports hall was constructed to host the musical, and the producers used 6,000sq.m of white cloth to create a deserted icy environment where the drama is played out.
Audio requirements included 18 omni-headband mics, 32 inputs from the 18-piece orchestra, plus a stereo sub mix from a 10-piece choir, as well as several additional stereo sources.
"The orchestra produced quite a bit of direct sound as they were positioned behind the PA hangs on the left, so we used two groups with different delay settings for left and right," comments Lydfiksern's MD, Thomas Mikarlsen, who engineered the concert. "We also applied delay to the choir's stereo input and some other outputs as well. On the sub feeds, it was really easy to dial in the delay time to get them in phase with the PA because iLive's response time is so fast."
Mikarlsen used 56 inputs and 24 outputs, mixing L/C/R plus two delay zones, local monitors, two subwoofer feeds, and 15 different monitor sends comprising five IEM's in mono and 10 wedge feeds.
"I used a lot of compression and a few gates. The EQ is very nice sounding and transparent, and the FX sounds great. Selecting functions, such as the PEQ, GEQ, dynamics or preamp on screen was neat, as you can edit them with a stylus and the changes are applied immediately so you can easily hear them as you go," continues Mikarlsen. "Routing and assigning is a breeze, and I never felt the console was being maxed out by everything I ran through it.
"It was my first live experience with the iLive and I have to say it came through with flying colours. It's fast, compact and very powerful, and I don't think anything in its price-range can touch it right now."
(Jim Evans)
