Britain's best-selling homegrown reggae band, UB40 is running a high-technology show for this tour. FOH engineer Tom Wiggans is mixing on a DiGiCo D5, and all musicians using in-ear monitoring. And the PA is a Nexo GEO T system, typically configured in a L/C/R design, with 20+3 box arrays left and right, and a 5-cabinet centre cluster.
System tech Adam Scott completes the description. "The smaller venues might only require 14 of the T4805 cabinets, plus three downfill boxes, but for the arenas, we are using everything in the truck. There's a second line of outhangs, which use five T4805s plus three downfills, but which can go as high as 11 plus 3. Because the main PA can be angled off-stange by about 15-20°, this leaves a little hole in the middle, which we address with a centre array of 2+3 which covers about 30 metres into the hall."
Sub-bass units, Nexo CD18s, are stacked three-high, with 10 units either side of the stage and a further four CD12s along the centre of the stage. Because it's a reggae band, the design is explicitly bass heavy. Six Nexo PS8s with their horns twisted into the horizontal position are used on stage for infill. The system is powered by sixty Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers.
However, the big adventure on this tour is the pioneering use of the Ethersound capability of Nexo's NX242 TDController processors for remote monitoring, enabling the crew to dial delay settings into the processors that are at stage, and providing the ability to monitor loads, impedances, gains and limiter thresholds. "This has proved an absolute godsend," says Scott, "it is so much quicker. The next big step will be to use the network for remoting the amps and for the digital audio returns."
Adam Scott has spent much of 2005 in the company of Nexo GEO T, working the full festival season with SSE's GEO rigs, and on the Morrissey tour before that. "In terms of truck space and efficiency, this system is incredible. We 've only got three PA people on this show. Generally we get in at 10am, the PA is all up and cabled by 1.30 - that's five hangs, front fills and subs - and we can go for lunch!"
(Lee Baldock)
