Depending on who was the special guest for the workshop, topics varied from place to place. In Hungary, Innovason's special guest was Tonmeister and engineer, Carsten Kümmel. Innovason distributor, Microsound organised a workshop/seminar in the Millenaris Park Theatre in the centre of Budapest.
"Carsten ran an excellent workshop on the use of Eclipse for classical concerts using the examples of the Classic Open Air festival in Berlin and the prestigious Thurn and Taxis Palace festival in Regensburg, both of which he engineered on an Eclipse," noted Babazadeh. "Special focus was given to the use of digital microphones and in particular the use of delay panning in order to place all of the instruments correctly in the sound image, thus providing an equal mix for everyone in the audience and ensuring that everyone heard the same things at the same time."
In Poland, the seminar was hosted by Innovason distributor, Dysten at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. Some 40 engineers and audio professionals came from across Poland to attend a workshop given by FoH engineer Spike Jones who gave an impressive insight into his work with British band Archive who recently toured with a full orchestra. Jones described how he used one Eclipse for the orchestra for the first leg of the tour, and was so impressed with the results that he decided to get rid of the console he had been using for the band and replace it with a second Eclipse for the second leg of the tour.
"We worked with the files that were recorded to M.A.R.S. at last year's Rock en Seine concert in Paris (in front of an audience of 40,000) and synchronized it with an external PC that had unreleased video footage from the concert," described Babazadeh. "It was very cool - it was like mixing the show all over again! Spike was able to show people firsthand how he worked and illustrate how he'd set up the console and why. It was very enlightening for the guests who were fascinated to see the desk in action and to hear the results for themselves. It was an amazing demonstration of the capacities of the console for both a classical orchestra and a rock band.
"It's been an immensely satisfying and productive tour. We have been incredibly well received everywhere and attendance figures have been excellent with anything up to around sixty people. Our thanks to all of our distributors and customers who made this possible, as well of course to our guest speakers who were wonderful ambassadors for us."
(Jim Evans)
