IEMs all the way for monitoring. Bono has a "couple of low profile Clair 12AMII ‘Stealth’ wedges" but otherwise it's a clean stage for the monitoring aspect.
"INTO THE UNDERWORLD
Before rehearsals for 360°, monitor engineer Dave Skaff had spent most of the last three years off the road working for Digidesign. A call from Joe O’Herlihy catapulted him back into the touring world and he’s glad to be in the thick of it once more.
Monitor duties for this tour are divided between Skaff, Niall Slevin and Alistair McMillan, who is charged with recording each show. Robbie Adams was also present in Barcelona in a monitor consultant’s role.
DiGiCo SD7s are also favoured in the monitor underworld by Slevin and McMillan, with one assigned to Bono and another for The Edge, whose monitoring has always required complex attention.
A Digidesign D-Show Profile is run by Skaff for Clayton, Mullen Jr and invisible keyboard player Terry Lawless. Skaff’s Profile choice was, he said, influenced by the tight working area beneath the stage.
“It’s cramped down here, but you get used to it!” laughed Skaff, another U2 long-timer. “We don’t have a direct line of sight to the band because of where we are, so we’re working off video monitors. There’s also a separate mixer that mixes the 15 talk-back mics that link us to FOH and the stage.”
The band are on Future Sonics ear monitors, paired with Sennheiser G2 hardware. And apart from a couple of low profile Clair 12AMII ‘Stealth’ wedges for Bono, it’s a fairly ‘clean’ stage.
This is Future Sonics’ 17th year with U2 and in addition to the band’s requirements, the company, headed by founder Marty Garcia, has also been working with the security team to provide improved communication.
Although Skaff and Slevin previously included wireless frequency management as part of their daily tasks, the scale of this production required a dedicated RF technician, namely Josh Flower of Wireless First.
“The wireless thing has been a battle here in Barcelona which is a notoriously bad city for RF, with things flying about all over,” Skaff explained. “We wanted to get into a ground-based antennae solution that is more serviceable.
“There was also the complication of this big screen which is a huge metal shield and power supplies are usually the main offenders when it comes to affecting wireless transmission. But because of the way it’s designed, the power supplies are located high enough to not have a severe impact.
“We’ve got double sets of frequencies within the 500-600MHz band for everyone and around 60 belt packs to ensure that everybody gets what they need. It’s bordering on enough wireless kit to set up a dealership!”
Clair’s sound crew also includes Ben Blocker, Hannes Dander, Thomas Ford, Chris Fulton, Kelsey Gingrich, Pascal Harlaut, Joel Merrill, Jason O’Dell and Jennifer Smola."
From
U2 360° - Total Production
