Rain on parade

When Asian mega-star Rain planned to finish his Legend of Rainism world tour in Taiwan, the expected audience looked certain to exceed the capacity of Taipei’s largest venues. Seizing the opportunity, the Kaohsiung municipality stepped in to offer its new 40,000-capacity sports stadium. The concert – the largest show so far staged in Taiwan – gave the stadium the title of the first ‘mega concert’ venue in the country.

Built for the 2009 World Games, the Kaohsiung World Games Stadium significantly betters the 10,000 to 12,000 seats offered by the Taipei Stadium, Taipei Arena or the Taipei’s various convention centre halls, but would consequently require a larger sound system than Taiwan had previously seen. In order to agree the tour dates with Rain’s producers in Korea, Taiwan promoter Brokers Brothers had to ensure that the high-performance sound, sophisticated lighting and video, and large staging requirements of the show could be met by local partners, so they had to be certain they had suppliers who could deliver on an unprecedented scale.

After reviewing the options with rental company Seoul Sound, a long-time user of L-Acoustics V-Dosc systems and the official sound production company for the show, the promoter called up Philip Deng, owner of long-standing Taiwan rental and sound production company and Nexo rental partner and distributor, Bornfree Inc. ‘We are happy to work with Philip Deng and his team,’ ‘Boss’ Cho, the charismatic owner of Seoul Sound says: ‘Bornfree is a very good family-run company – the people are very nice and their service is excellent. Although the tour normally uses a V-Dosc system, we know that Nexo products are very good too.’

Seoul Sound engineers visited the stadium and quickly got a good idea of what was required, then issued a rider specific to the venue, based on a FOH system comprising 16 V-Dosc line source elements, with an additional 16 flown SB28 subs and 16 SB28 ground-stacked subs, and 16 V-Dosc boxes in side hangs. Further delay towers using Kudos located at the mid-field position were specified to extend the coverage to the stand ends and corners. Bornfree, whose inventory includes all Nexo systems: Geo-T, Geo-D, Geo-S12, Alpha and PS series, turned to Nexo’s Asia sales manager, Nicolas Kirsch for advice on how to design a system with similar or higher performance using Nexo systems and to recommend what additional equipment would be needed. Adding a review of the stadium’s regulations (preventing delay towers being set up on the grass field, for example) to his long experience in this type of application, he modified the design to use Nexo’s long-throw Geo-T to handle the complete field from the FOH, and use point source Nexo Alpha system as wide-angle delays for the corners and end-seating.

This was also one of the first opportunities for Nexo Asia to bring in concert sound engineer Scott Mason, who looked after the system set-up, calibration and tuning. Having been involved in the Beijing Olympics as sound director for all of the major sponsor’s corporate and public events, he decided to extend his stay in Beijing (where he got married soon after the Olympics) and was invited by Mr Kirsch to help him support Nexo in the Asian market. Here he works with Nexo rental partners, improving live-sound techniques and practices. Clearly, his experience in engineering and mixing similar stadium shows for artists such as Phil Collins and Tom Jones would be put to good use on the Rain concerts.

For the FOH Nicolas asked Bornfree to prepare the latest configuration for its Nexo system using Nxstream management software. This called for a three-way system using Geo-T full-range boxes (crossed over at 90Hz), Geo-Subs for flown bass-reinforcement (from 85Hz to 250Hz) and CD18 boxes ground-stacked for reinforcement below 85Hz. The system uses FIR algorithms to provide exceptional linear phase and smooth frequency response. For power and control, the height of the Geo-T line was important, and in order to match Seoul Sound’s request for an 8m high line source, Mr Kirsch used 32 Geo-T cabinets per side, as well as 12 Geo-Subs and 12 CD18 cardioid subwoofers per side. ‘The Geo-T is an exceptionally compact cabinet for its power,’ Mr Kirsch observes. ‘It is also extremely directional, with a 5° vertical HF output per module, so it throws a lot further. When you go up to an 8m line, you also get very tight control down to 90kHz with a nice front lobe in the low-mids, so such a Geo-T line provides full-range performance at over 100m.’

Finally, stacks of CD18s were laid on the floor in a typical fan configuration. Mr Mason had initially tried to stack the subs at stage level to get more projection, but their huge power meant the whole stage had started to vibrate, raising concerns for the large LED walls located above. The CD18 were moved back to the floor. ‘These subs are very powerful,’ says Mr Cho. ‘They give very even coverage from near the stage all the way to end of the field – it works like a beam of sound.’

The rest of the system included 12 Geo-D boxes for side-hangs at 60° off axis, and four Alpha E-F and two Alpha S2 speakers for stage front fill. The fills were extremely important, as the ‘fan zone’ surrounding the long catwalk would be the most packed area of the arena. All systems were controlled by Nexo NX242ES4 processors with EtherSound, and powered by Camco V6 amplifiers.

For an event of this size, even Bornfree’s inventory was short of 16 Geo-T boxes, and it was thanks to Nexo rental partner Way Audio in Seoul that those were quickly dispatched to Taiwan. With the entire show confirmed just a week earlier, these missed the first day of set-up. ‘I prepared the system to work without those extra boxes, 24 per side only, as you never know what can happen,’ says Mr Mason. ‘Acoustically, we would have been able to do the show with only 24 a side, but the extra eight would be very welcome.’

Within minutes of arrival, the angles were adjusted through Geo-Soft and the system was up. The next morning, first thing was to load the newly arrived cabinets on the rigs. ‘It took us two hours to drop the system, add the extra boxes in, adjust the angles based on the original design then lift them back into place,’ Mr Mason says. ‘The Kelping Beam system of the Geo-T bumper system is the best I have ever used. The Seoul Sound engineers were extremely impressed as they are accustomed to much more bulky systems, which are heavy and need lots of people to manipulate. The change would have taken a day with any other system of this class.’

For the delay systems, clusters of three Alpha M3s, three Alpha B1s and three Alpha S2s were placed at the main delay tower covering the stands corners, with a central cluster of three Alpha e-Fs for the centre delay tower. The Alpha cabinets were able to throw about 50m from the ground to the upper rows, and after little equalisation, blended well with the FOH sound.

The high-SPL of the system was enough to cover the 4s rotating tap echo caused by the curved structures between the lower and upper stands. The sound in more than 80 per cent of the stadium was judged from very good on the pitch and rear stands, pretty good at corners area and on the centre wings (with a bit of loss of punch at the Geo-T/Alpha transition area) to good at the stage sides. ‘The sound quality was very good until the stage sightlines limits, and even slightly further out as the Geo-D provided good full-range sound and throw until beyond the sightlines,’ Mr Kirsch adds. ‘There was no area of the seating that didn’t have a decent full range and clear enough sound. Every seat could be sold.’

For signal management and control, an XTA processor took the main mix, sub and delay from the Yamaha PM5D at FOH, and provided separate outputs for Geo-T LR, Geo-Sub LR, CD18 and out fill Geo-D. Mr Mason also used a laptop running Smaart Live and AVS ESMonitor to remote control the Nexo NX242s in the amp racks under the stage.

The initial tests showed the system was hitting 125dB at the desk 50m from stage, and about 114dB at the end of the pitch, with about 4dB wideband headroom remaining before triggering the NX242 driver displacement control. Mr Mason calibrated the XTA processor so that channels clips were in sync with NX242 clip, giving a simple visual reference of the overall system level to the mixing engineer. He kept a watchful eye through ESMonitor allowing him to make gain adjustments if needed.

After fine calibration, the system was handed to Rain mix engineer Ko Jing-jun, with a flat system EQ and optimised console headroom. The engineer was quick to satisfy himself of the power handling through a session of loud heavy metal and hip-hop tunes. ‘The Rain show has a very funky music, sometimes hip-hop and very groovy,’ says Mr Mason. ‘We want to add some punch and warmth in the drums and bass range.’

The stage sound demanded that the 20m by 10m dance area – including dance platform, water effect areas and main catwalk – be covered by high-power side fill with wide horizontal dispersion. Again Nexo Alphas were used as a ground-stacked system of three Alpha eFs on top of three Alpha S2 subs, delivering SPL in line with the FOH over the entire area. Further out, the stage edge used Nexo PS15 dropped in a ‘technical trough’ with lighting effects and more PS15 at the end of catwalks forming a cross. These were used extensively near the end of the show, to ‘connect’ with the female fans.

The sound on stage has to be loud, and as Rain uses a headset during all the dance pieces, best gain before feedback was critical. The monitor engineer on a Digidesign D-Show showed his experience here, as feedback was heard only once during the show. But with the massive catwalk system stretching about 20m out and 20m wide in front of FOH there was a risk of feedback with the Geo-T rig. ‘We did not even consider this problem, as the Geo-T tangent technology is very accurate,’ says Mr Kirsch. ‘Since there is no interference, there is very minimal risk of feedback.’

The 10-piece band was set on a riser at the stage rear, spread over the full width of the stage, and used PS15 wedges as well as headphone or IEMs fed through an Aviom system.

The tightly choreographed show included dance on almost every song, except for a slow piece where Rain joined his musicians on the riser. The sync between the dance and special effects required intense rehearsals of lighting, videos and props, but this being the last date of the tour, the Korean team of lighting and video engineers had everything in hand. Sound-wise, the rehearsals included a daily practice for the musicians and a full rehearsal for Rain himself. For other parts, the show relies on sound effects or tracks which are played back manually by a technician from a Pro Tools system set up next the FOH desk.

Within minutes of the first band practice beginning, Mr Ko had the Geo-T giving its best. The drum sound had natural depth, the electro-acoustic guitar on a tango was clear, and the four-singer chorus was soulful and warm. The show delivered its powerful display of high and low beats, sound effects and a fury of video effects, fire and water works. The last song was a hard-beat trance track played from Pro Tools, a ‘thank you onstage from Rain to his dancers’. Mr Cho, who had watched the entire show run without a hiccup, asked Mr Mason to give the system everything for this number – unleashing an extra 5dB into the subwoofers. The whole stadium stood up and danced, ending the Legend of Rainism tour with tremendous applause.

www.bornfree.com.tw

www.seoulsound.com

www.nexo-sa.com

Published in PAA March-April 2010