Rihanna sings in the New Year

Published: June 02, 2010 MEA

UAE: With an incredible stage show, fantastic dance choreography and stunning costumes for the songstress, Rihanna’s Middle East debut provided an unforgettable way to welcome 2010.

Global superstar Rihanna brought in the new decade in front of more than 10,000 fans with a stunning two-hour long performance on the lawns of Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace followed by a spectacular firework display. Arriving in Abu Dhabi two days prior to the concert to rehearse for her show, fans were certainly not disappointed as she flawlessly performed some of her most celebrated hits including ‘Disturbia’, her new single ‘Hard’ and an encore of her international hit ‘Umbrella’.

Flash Entertainment, the Abu Dhabi-based events consultancy that brought Rihanna to the capital, described the night as a ‘triumph’. Flash managing director, John Lickrish, comments: ‘Tonight was a huge success and a truly memorable way to end a great year for Flash and Abu Dhabi. Rihanna’s performance left us all breathless and set a very high benchmark for next year. With such outstanding artist performances in the past year, 2010 can only get bigger and better – Abu Dhabi has once more proved that it is the party capital of the region; we look forward to another incredible year ahead.’

Providing the audio equipment for the concert was Dubai-based Production Technology (Protec). ‘We provided 99.9 per cent of the audio equipment for that gig, which is quite unusual for the big international acts,’ says Protec senior audio technician John Parkhouse. ‘Sometimes it’s just racks and stacks, sometimes they want a desk off you, but in this instance we provided everything,’ he continues. ‘We provided both desks, all the multi system, all the line system, and all the mics bar a few. They came with a front-of-house engineer and a monitor engineer and that was it.’

For the main system, Protec used an L-Acoustics V-Dosc system made up of 30 V-Dosc cabinets hung 15 per side and twelve dV-Dosc boxes with two on each hang and a further four pairs ground-stacked. ‘We were really happy with it, and the front-of-house engineer for Rihanna commented that he thought it was one of the best V-Dosc system he’d ever heard. Coming from somebody like that who has worked with some of the biggest acts on the planet it was a big compliment,’ says Mr Parkhouse.
Lab.gruppen amplifiers were chosen to power the FOH system (‘We used every amp rack that we own…’) and processing came from six XTA DP448s.

Since purchasing the system in the summer of 2009, Protec has been concentrating its efforts on finding the optimum sub configuration. ‘Ed (Edward Ross - Protec Audio HOD) has been doing a lot of research into sub configuration and getting the most out of the subs,’ says Mr Parkhouse. ‘We are developing a way in which we build a stack of five and reverse the bottom one, so it pushes it out further and wider and reduces onstage sub levels’ he explains. ‘Its called a cardioid sub configuration; it’s quite well documented in manuals, but actually putting it into practice with some ‘tweaks’ and hearing the difference has been great.’
With this configuration, Mr Parkhouse believes Protec is pushing the system to its absolute limit. ‘We are just trying to push it as far as we can go with it without damaging anything.’ He believes that even though it is very good, the SB218 V-Dosc sub is the weakest component of the system but this set-up gets the best out of them.

This cardioid sub configuration was used by Protec for the Rihanna concert. ‘We had 24 SB218 subs. We had four stacks of five in the cardiod sub configuration, and two centre fill pairs stacked upright with two dVs on top of each stack.’ The company also used two drops JBL VerTec as out fill, using 12 of the 4889 line array cabinets and eight of the 4880A array sub speakers.

‘We really went to town on the overall coverage,’ enthuses Mr Parkhouse. ‘We like to spend a lot of time to make sure we’ve got the right amount for the venue, and we like to make sure that every box is doing some work for the audience, rather than firing above everybody’s heads. We’re using all the energy that the system has got to cover an audience area rather than simply throwing as many boxes at it as possible.’

‘Because of the sub configuration we had to modify the way we wired the sub. With one reversed you’ve got to delay it in a certain way, so that when the sound comes round the front and meets with the front speakers, it’s aligned. That’s what draws the sound out of the front more.’

This set-up required Protec to precisely measure the distance between each sub stack to get the positioning right. ‘Using a 40Hz wavelength we position the stacks so they are a third or a quarter of a wavelength apart. Just so that when it all pushes forward it’s aligned on all plains and pushes as hard as it possibly can in unison. Sub config is something we are continually developing and experimenting with.’

There were requests on the technical rider for a DiGiCo D5 console at front of house and a Digidesign Profile desk for monitors, as well as a considerable amount of in-ear monitors for the band, explains Mr Parkhouse. Both the Sennheiser EW300 in-ear system and the Shure P41 wired in-ear pack were requested for this task. Protec needed to dry-hire the Profile desk for the event, but enjoyed the user experience so much it decided to purchase the desk outright after the gig. The monitor set-up also included a further six JBL VerTec 4888 line array cabinets and four JBL 4880A subs as well as two Turbosound TFM330 monitors and three Nexo CD12 sub bass speakers.

Alongside the D5, the FOH set up included Smaart Live for time alignment, 2 Avalon VT-747 tube preamps, 3 Lexicon PCM91 digital reverbs, a BSS DPR901 MkII equaliser, a TC Electronic D-Two multi-tap delay unit, a Klark Technik DN6000 analyser, a Camco Tecton 32.4 amplifier, two Funktion-One F81 compact speakers, four dbx 160a compressor limiters, two Fostex 630i self-powered monitors, a Denon DNC640 networkable CD player and a Tascam CD recorder. For mics, two AKG 451Es were required alongside four Shure UR2 Beta 87a handheld radio mics, two AKG C414 B XLS, one Shure Beta 91 microphone, and six Shure SM57 microphones.

The gig itself went really well, says Mr Parkhouse: ‘They wanted to do three days of rehearsals and it went really well. All the people I spoke to in the audience really enjoyed it and thought she put on a great performance. And technically it was flawless – there wasn’t a single issue to have to deal with, which we like!’

www.productiontec.com
www.thinkflash.ae

Published in PAME March April 2010