Sixth Annual MOBO Awards A Sound Success
Jan 10, 2002 12:00 PM
The sixth annual Music of Black Origin Awards were hosted by Radio One's Trevor Nelson and R&B songstress, Kelis, at the London Arena. Britannia Row was the sound contractor, who decided to take the unusual step of trialing a new system at the event. With the help of Telex/EVI's Bob Doyle and Paul Barretta from UK EV distributor Shuttlesound, Brit Row put Electro-Voice's new line array system, X-Line through its paces on its first major UK gig. Other equipment in the system included two Heritage 3000s, each on both FOH and monitors; untouched graphics from BSS, and system processing from Klark Teknik with teh new DN9848.
Sound designer and FOH engineer, Derrick Sieba, who has vast experience of such events (having worked on teh Brits for the last nin years, as well as teh MOBOs) confessesed to a certain reticence when plans to use X-Line were announced. "I've used line array systems before, and although I thought it was wonderful for classical work in terms of ease of use and that hi-fi audio quality, in my opinion, it was not appropriate for rock and roll [because] it was imossible to get the necessary level and punch out of the bottom end. And here we are proposing to use a line array system for the MOBOs? You can't get much more seriously demanding bottom end than that!"
However, after a series of conversations with Britrow's Bryan Grand, who had been running X-Line on a number of large Radio One events over the summer, and who assured Zieba that the system was man enough for the job, Zieba allowed himself to be persuaded to use X-Line for the MOBOs.
As it turned out, Zieba's fears were calmed. The system provided a coverage level that was virtually even from front to back; and the bass was "as good as anything I've ever heard," said Zieba. X-Line proved to have a smooth frequence response across the entire range.
The podium mics, though sometimes a trouble area with awards shows, were a hit, too. "It's always a problem on awards shows of this nature," Zieba explained, "With the best will in the world, those presenting the awards are rarely professional speakers. And, let's face it, with everything else that's going on, plus a healthy dose of nerves, mic technique is usually the last thing on their minds! So we often have problems with both level and occasionally feedback, but X-Line gave us so much level we could both equal the hosts' handhelds and project right to the back of the room with no problem at all."
