For Sennheiser, being part of such a prestigious, high production value tour fits perfectly with its ethos of providing world-class, innovative solutions that continually push the boundaries of audio technology, says the company. Front-of-House engineer for the tour is Dave Bracey and he was delighted with Digital 9000 from the moment he heard it.
"This is the first time that Adele, Joe [Campbell, monitor engineer] and I have used Digital 9000," Dave explains. "Adele had used a different Sennheiser mic for her previous tour, which she really liked. We were going to try out several alternative mics with her during rehearsals, but after we listened to the 9000 we knew we already had the winner. So we compared Adele's previous Sennheiser mic to the Digital 9000 with a 9235 capsule with her and the 9000 sound was twice as good. It was such a leap forward straight away that we knew it was the right choice. Its whole sonic character is amazing.
"The main thing is that there's no compression or expanding going on in the transmission stage, so all of that messing with the signal that happened with analogue radio systems is just not there now. It used to be the case that the cable version of any system sounded better than the radio one. Now there is a radio system that sounds as good as, or better than, any cable microphone I've ever heard. That's a pretty cool thing to lay your ears across."
With the mic initially running analogue out, Dave and Joe did an A/B test using AES out. "That was superior sound again," says Dave. "Now we're running AES from the mic capsule all the way to the amps flown in the roof. It doesn't hit anything analogue between the capsule and the amp - which is everything - so it's an absolutely clean path."
"It sounds great," agrees Joe. "It's the best sounding radio mic we've ever used and, moreover, Adele likes it. She's got a very good ear and she really likes it."
Control tech Oliver Twiby is in charge of managing the required radio frequencies. "I do all the RF management. At each venue, I scan the venue to check what frequencies we can use and then license them through Ali Viles at Mission Control. We have 22 Sennheiser 2000 in-ears and for Adele we're running four frequencies in two ranges, a main and a backup in both ranges. We have eight 9000 Series mics. We're using the entire rack and we have a redundant unit that we can hot swap to, and we're also running some wireless talk-back mics for techs."
"The advancement in RF technology has enabled us to do more with more reliability," said Richard Young, production manager. "The Sennheiser system allows us to have confidence every night that the audio will be rock solid."
(Jim Evans)
