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Meyer Systems Power Europe's Premier Rock Fest
Taken separately, either Rock am Ring or Rock im Park would be a contender for the title of Europe's largest and most successful rock music festival. When taken together, however, nothing else even comes close. This joint festival in Germany is really two separate but nearly identical events, with the same acts playing at two "mirror" sites about 250 miles apart on different days of the same weekend. Rock am Ring is held at the Nürburgring Grand Prix race track in the Rhineland, while Rock im Park is staged simultaneously at the Parkstadion soccer stadium in the Bavarian city of Nürnberg. The dual festivals are produced by Marek Lieberberg Concerts, and total attendance for this year's shows was estimated at over 200,000. Among the eighty acts presented (on four stages at each venue) were headliners Alanis Morissette, Limp Bizkit, Radiohead, Kid Rock, A-ha, Tool and Godsmack. The 2001 staging of Rock am Ring/Park marked the first time in the 15-year history of the festivals that Meyer Sound systems were used for the principal PAs, in this case for the main stages at both sites as well as for the Alterna stage at Rock am Ring. The three Meyer systems were supplied by Rocksound of Hannover. M3D Draws Attention Although the massive main stage systems were far more powerful – each built around main arrays of forty-eight MSL-4s, twenty-four DS-4P mid-bass units and twenty 650-P subwoofers – it was the Alterna stage that aroused considerable curiosity among audio professionals and band FOH mixers, primarily because it marked the rock festival debut of Meyer Sound's new M3D Line Array Loudspeaker. The M3D cabinets were flown twelve per side, with deep bass augmented by twenty-four 650-R2 subwoofers and front fill provided by eight MSL-4s and six UPA-2Ps. Rocksound's man in charge at the Alterna stage mix platform was Oliver Voges, an independent sound engineer who served as FOH system tech and back-up mixer. A veteran of many tours using a variety of other line array systems, Voges was immediately impressed by the M3D's astonishing far-field power and its extraordinary accuracy. "The Alterna stage was set up to cover an area extending back about ninety meters," says Voges, "and the M3D handled this easily without using delays. We had levels of 114 to 115 dBA at front-of-house during the Tool set, and about 92 at the edge of the coverage area. We could have thrown 100 meters and beyond if we had set the first four rows of M3D cabinets at zero degrees, but we only had the first at zero and the next three at minus one." The long-distance projection of the M3D was ably demonstrated during set-up, when Voges got a call from Rocksound engineers over at the Main Stage, approximately one kilometer away. "Sounds good over here," they commented. Phase Coherence Clearly Superior The M3D arrays also impressed Voges with their remarkable linearity and phase coherence. "During setup we were trying out various effects units and presets using live voice announcements and prerecords," he recalls. "Before, with other line arrays, I couldn't really tell the difference between the same basic reverb setting, such as a plate hall, on different brands of reverb units. But with the M3D you can really hear the difference between engines, just like when listening with a good studio monitor. It's a whole new situation. The phase coherence is really there, and the result is unbelievable." The Meyer M3D system also found new converts among FOH mixers for the various bands playing the Alterna stage. "Some systems that are optimized for vocals come out sounding thin with our music," says Georg Türk, FOH mixer for German hard-rockers H-Blockx, "but that's not the case with the M3D. After the set change, I needed to make only very minimal changes in the basic system settings in order to optimize it for the H-Blockz sound – which speaks well for the quality of the M3D arrays. And although I pushed the system up very loud, it never distorted." Other band mixers were similarly enthused about the M3D sound, according to Oliver Voges. "I remember when the mixer for Travis was setting up, and getting his kick drum sound. He hooked in this subharmonic processor, and did some other strange things, then ordered up kick drum from the stage. It was straight in-your-face, with tons of sub-bass. He looked up and me and said, 'Oh, baby, this is going to be fun.'" The biggest draw of the weekend to the Alterna stage was Tool, and apparently the band's mix engineer, Nobbi, was similarly impressed. "He told me it was the best line array he had heard so far," says Voges. "In fact, we were both at another festival a few weeks later where they were using a different line array, and he told me, 'Well, it works okay, but it's not what we had back at the Ring.'" Main Systems: Open Field, Semi-enclosed Stadium Certainly a larger M3D system would have proven similarly successful at the main stage, but the very large M3D systems will have to wait until supply catches up with demand. Fortunately, Rocksound had a sufficient supply of other Concert Series products from Meyer to outfit the two main stages. At Rock am Ring, with the audience gathered across a vast open space, the system required a number of delay towers to maintain consistent sound quality. The two towers in the first delay ring each employed eight MSL-4s, four DS-4Ps, four 650-P subwoofers and four SB-1 Sound Beams to fill in mid-highs for the far corners. The second delay ring towers each had four MSL-4s, two DS-4Ps and two 650-Ps. An even dozen UPA-2Ps provided front fill. Down the road, at Rock im Park in the soccer stadium, the front arrays for the Main Stage system were essentially the same, with the only substantial difference being the addition of four MSL-6 cabinets. The delay systems were quite different, however, because of the somewhat smaller and semi-enclosed space of the stadium. The FOH delay comprised a pair each of MSL-6 and MSL-4 cabinets, plus eight 650-P subwoofers. Other Meyer Sound products were fully integrated into the systems at all three venues, including CP-10 parametric equalizers, LD-1A line drivers and the RMS Remote Monitoring System. Meyer's SIM System II was used to optimize system response both before and during the festival performances. August, 2001 |
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