The event was heightened by the unexpected announcement, a week earlier, that United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was retiring after 26 years at the helm - transforming a football club that had under-achieved for many years into one of the world's most successful. As the open-topped bus made its way from Old Trafford, The Courteneers entertained the Albert Square crowd with a set that included Not Nineteen Forever - a song adopted by many supporters to celebrate the team's record 20th league winning season.
Audio infrastructure for the Albert Square stage was provided by tube UK. They supplied a complete audio package - including the CL5 and a pair of Rio3224-D i/o units - to Manchester City Council, with the entire event funded by Manchester United.
As well as the band inputs, the system featured microphones for the players and officials to speak from the stage and a Mac Pro for pre-recorded audio playback.
"It was a very functional show - we rigged in the morning, were open for business by mid-afternoon, the show was in the early evening and we did the de-rig straight afterwards," says tube UK managing director Melvyn Coote. "We do a lot of these events for Manchester City Council and time is always the biggest challenge.
"One of the huge advantages of the CL5 is that it is very straightforward to set up quickly. It is very easy to program, even for a really last-minute job. Whatever the timescale, we can arrive on site with a very highly-prepared desk. That makes the work on site a lot less problematic."
He continues, "The whole event was broadcast live on the BBC News Channel, so we were transmitting to the world. We needed a lot of level from the microphones to cover 12,000 noisy football fans in an 80x60m area, maintaining the intelligibility so that it sounded great for both them and the broadcast microphones. The CL5 was a definite aid to that, it's a really good-sounding desk.
"Another advantage is its ease of use. The Courteneers front of house engineer had never used one before, but he really enjoyed the experience. That's what we're finding with a lot of band engineers - those who would prefer to use something like a PM5D are happy to use the CL5 and they enjoy mixing on it."
(Jim Evans)
