U2 Rocks Greenpoint Stadium
The U2 360 World Tour rocked Cape Towns Green Point Stadium, Friday 18 February, to an estimated 70 000 capacity crowd. For those not fortunate enough to get tickets – the show was broadcast live on 94.7 Highveld Stereo and KFM, alongside a live stream throughout Africa on Dstvafrica.com, and to the world on U2360.com.
Sound Stylists was tasked with bringing this epic concert live to the airwaves, a job made easy by the vast array of equipment in stock that could be effortlessly married to the U2 gear. Beneath the mammoth 40m high stage structure dubbed ‘The CLAW’, lay the “Underworld”, a string of maintenance areas, change areas and most importantly – the U2 monitor world. Sporting no less than 4 different mixing consoles for the band, the Underworld exists as the shows engine room and on this occasion the source for our broadcast feed.
Our biggest challenge was gaining access to the existing U2 system information. We were unable to patch in to their fibre system as this would have been too “risky” – so a MADI feed was taken out of their Digico Digiracks. The benefit of this was that the feed was completely autonomous of their system and we could not influence their gain structures. Also working on the DiGiCo desks made our lives a lot easier as we also knew that the gains that we were being fed would be compatible and just require “trimming”.
The bands existing system comprised of two DiGiCo Stage Racks with 56 ins and 8 outs per rack, a total of 112 input channels which needed to be sent to the broadcast centre. Fibre optics were our only option due to the legnth of the signal run – over 250m. For optimal compatibility we chose to use the DiGiCo D5 with two DiGiCo stage racks. The first rack comprised of 56 ins and 56 outs, while the second rack comprised of 32 ins and 32 outs, with 3 AES slot cards for digital sends. The reason for the large amount of direct outs was so that we could feed a reduced channel count of 72 to a Digidesign Profile where the engineer used Waves plug in’s.
The signals were tested the day before the concert when the band was set up in the rehearsal room. This gave the team the opportunity to make sure all the channels were correctly patched and clean. The main signal was then tapped from U2’s main stage racks out of the MADI ports and through a RME MADI bridge. This converted the signal into a four core fibre cable then fed the signal down a 250m run to another RME MADI brige where it was then re converted back to MADI, and then into the Digico D5. A MADI bridge allows for up to 16 devices to be freely connected with each other by 6 coaxial (BNC) and 2 optical in- and output pairs. The other advantage of the MADI bridge was that it also allowed us to connect an ADK multitrack unit – which was then preloaded with the Jhb concert and we were then able to play this back as a reference before the show, creating snapshots for each song which included different plug ins and channel EQ. s
We flipped back to the fibre line for sound checks and the main show. As a backup contingency plan - a separate analogue feed was taken from the main FOH Console in case the fibre line went down. As the band had unique socket files (their racks were configured around Clair Bros 40 ch multicore systems), there was extensive cross patching required, but the D5 made this effortless.
As the recording studio was some distance from the stage and well out of the way of the pa system, we also had to run video to the engineer so that he had some reference of what was happening on stage, this was done by tapping into the touring system’s video system (a 16 camera rig) and then taking a quad feed showing of each of the band members, this feed was again run down fibre to the “studio” and displayed on two 50” plasma screens. The room used for the broadcast was essentially a store room located in the bowels of the stadium. After we decided which room to use, we enlisted the help from acoustician Steven Moss, and set about treating the room to get it to sound as much as a studio as possible. Acoustic panels and a bass trap were brought down from Jhb (courtesy of Steven Moss). The room was then draped in as heavy a cloth as possible (we also had blankets hung behind the draping), office room dividers were also brought in to break the shape of the room. Fanie Marais of TADCO ran around for two days prior to the gear arriving, sorting out all of the acoustic treatment and making sure that power was made available in the room. Sven Hanson from Mushroom Productions was also great ensuring that condiuting points were opened us to which ensured direct cable runs between the stage and the “studio”. Cristo Hattingh also brought in two temporary acoustic panels. The nett effect was extremely good with just a slight reflection left in the room which was more than favourable.
A collection of monitors was made available to Declan Gaffney – U2’s engineer, which comprised of a pair of KRK’s, a pair of the new Coda K4’s, a pair of powered Yamaha NS10’s which he used for pfl and then his system of choice, a pair of Genelec 82504 monitors, to complete the system Dec also made use of a Genelec 7271A sub bass unit. Both Genelec products are powered and feature DSP control for EQ and alignment. The concert itself was also then recorded on an Alesis Masterlink unit; this allowed us to burn the show for the band directly after the concert.
Feedback from Graeme Cumming – GM of DStv Online Portals was nothing short of complementary as he praised the unbelievable teamwork and dedication shown by all in this project. According to the U2 production team, this live broadcast was the closest mirror image of their live event ever produced, a huge compliment to the Sound Stylists team and all involved.
