Meyer Sound News : Tenors Charm Mexico with Meyer Sound

Tenors Charm Mexico with Meyer Sound

"Even with the tight restrictions on placement of our arrays and delay stacks, the Meyer Sound rig performed flawlessly. It was a challenging show, but thanks to the Meyer Sound equipment, it was a very rewarding one as well."

- Enrique Perez Jr.
Technical Manager, Musica Moderna

When famed operatic star Luciano Pavarotti came down with laryngitis before a recent Three Tenors performance in Monterrey, Mexico, virtuosos Placido Domingo and José Carreras carried on without him. The inauguration of Monterrey's new Jardines del Parque Fundidora, as well as the kick off of the city's "Foro Internacional de las culturas (Forum of the Cultures) 2007", was a huge success due in part to an impressive Meyer Sound system provided by Musica Moderna of Mexico City.

The new open-air venue at the Parque Fundidora welcomed an opening day crowd of more than 60,000, and the challenges weren't limited to Pavarotti's absence. "It was the first show in a brand new venue," reports Enrique Perez Jr., Musica Moderna's technical manager. "The show was sold out, and we found out at the last-minute that we had no place for our delay stacks." True professionals all the way, Musica Moderna delivered an outstanding audio production in the face of numerous acoustical, environmental and logistical challenges.

"They laid down a plywood floor under the seating, and we had to put our delay stacks on Genie lifts, situated on the ground underneath the plywood, and cut through the wood for the lifts," adds sound consultant Dave Dennison. (The plywood "floor" was elevated about four feet on a frame built from two-by-fours. This elevation effectively reduced the maximum height above the audience that the lifts could attain.) "Ultimately, our delay stacks were pretty low, which made it difficult to project as far out as we would have liked without blowing away the people close to the stacks."

FOH engineer John Pellowe commanded the sound system, comprised of 20 M3D line array loudspeakers and four M3D-Sub directional subwoofers, all flown using patented QuickFly rigging. The main system was augmented with 10 USM-100P extended range wide coverage stage monitors for frontfill, and four M2D compact curvilinear array loudspeakers for center focus.

"John likes the M2D center fill," Dennison observes. "It brings out the vocals nicely. We would've used a couple more of them, but we were a bit height-restricted, and the center truss was already a bit heavily laden. Four did the trick nicely."

Sixteen MSL-4 horn-loaded long-throw loudspeakers provided delay reinforcement, with system drive functions and atmospheric compensation courtesy of two LD-3 compensating line drivers. Four CP-10 complementary phase parametric equalizers and a VX-1 program equalizer shaped the sound.

"Acoustically, the place was rather large — around 190 meters to the first delay points, and another 70 meters to the back," Perez recounts. "The audience seemed larger than the 60,000 they reported."

Aided by Meyer Sound's SIM audio analyzer, Dennison created a horizontal line array of subwoofers in order to achieve a wide, fan-shaped coverage pattern that matched the coverage of the main array. The subs were spaced appropriately to create the line array effect, then delayed sequentially to obtain the fan-shaped pattern. "The outside subs are on the longest delay time, the inner ones have a shorter delay, and the center has no delay," he explains. "That's always ground zero for me – no delay at the center, more delay as you go out, with as much as 10ms of delay at the outside of the fan. The purpose is to fan the (low frequency) wave out, so it matches the coverage of the HF driver. It spreads the image wider."

In addition to the acoustic challenges posed by the wood flooring, the weather also proved less than cooperative. Hot sun and high winds created a difficult environment for the orchestra, who had no side tarps hung on stage during rehearsals. When side tarps were finally put in place before the show, one poorly secured tarp swung loose and knocked down a few microphone stands.

The audience was also initially a challenge. The news of Pavarotti's cancellation was not relayed to the production crew until the day before the show, and the public was informed via radio broadcast that night, so many concertgoers never heard the announcement. With many in the audience having waited years to see this historical trio, there was some disappointment apparent in their early reception of Carreras and Domingo, even with the inclusion of national favorite José Fernandez filling in the third tenor part. By midway through their performance, however, it was clear the Tenors had won the hearts of the crowd.

Domingo observed that this was the first time in 15 years a Three Tenors show took place without one of the trio. "I am a soldier who goes to the front lines, and I knew we had to be there," he stated.

Space was at a premium at the mixing station, but Musica Moderna met the challenge with two small-footprint Yamaha PM5D consoles. As usual, Pellowe ran both the house mix and monitors from the FOH position, utilizing a pair of UPA-1P compact wide coverage loudspeakers at the mix station to audition the monitor mix.

An assortment of Meyer Sound self-powered Ultra Series systems provided monitoring on stage, including four UPM-1P ultra-compact wide coverage loudspeakers, four UM-1P narrow coverage stage monitors, two more UPA-1P units, and four L-track-equipped MSL-4 cabinets. The monitoring system also included Sennheiser in-ear systems.

"John is very familiar with the needs of the Three Tenors on stage when he mixes monitors from FOH, " Dennison reports. "As one person doing both jobs, he helps provide a cohesive bond between stage and audience. Aside from the Tenors' monitors, the rest of the monitoring mix is for conductor fill, piano fill and a bit of sidefill. Those become somewhat incidental for the singers, though they're vital for the orchestral sections to hear each other across the stage."

Perez acted as technical supervisor and FOH assistant, as well as managing the Musica Moderna crew of Antonio Mendez, Abel Castillo, Jose Miguel Hernandez, Oscar Flores, Luis Contreras and Oscar Oliva. "Even with the tight restrictions on placement of our arrays and delay stacks, the Meyer Sound rig performed flawlessly," he remarked. "It was a challenging show, but thanks to the Meyer Sound equipment, it was a very rewarding one as well."

Dennison agrees, saying "The best thing about this system is its long-throw capacity. Even 180 meters out from the stage, it sounded as if The Tenors were standing right in front of you."

November, 2005