With her album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful topping the charts in the UK and US and a headline set on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, Florence + the Machine is one of the indie artists of the moment.
A substantial L-Acoustics system was provided by Adlib, with the main PA hangs comprising 12 K1 speakers per side each with six K2 downs … a combination adopted after FOH engineer Jim Warren and Marco had good results with this format over the summer festival season and wanted to try it in arena settings.
A slightly unorthodox approach was in flying three eight-deep arrays of K1-SB subs – one either side of the main hangs, plus a centre cluster to even out the sub coverage. The standard side hangs were 12 L-Acoustics K2s per side. On the ground, the SB28 subs were arranged in an end-fire format comprising a row of two high and three wide with an identical row directly behind and all set up with critical spacing.
A special formula involving time alignment and phasing made this subwoofer layout extremely directional and functioning far more efficiently than a cardioid system, significantly reducing the sub frequencies behind the array. For front fill, they used a selection of ARC2 and Kara enclosures and LA8 amplifiers drove the entire system.
Adlib has a long history with New York-based Firehouse Productions, providing stacks and racks in UK & Europe on world tours supported by them. One such tour was Radiohead in 2012 with Warren – who now works with Florence. Narci Martinez (RHCP & Josh Groban production manager) is at the helm as the tour’s production manager. Marco (Marc Olivier Germain) is the systems engineer for the tour and, in collaboration with Warren, took the opportunity of implementing some new ideas to optimise Florence’s sound.
The Adlib crew was headed by Senior Systems Engineer Tony Szabo KSE, with Sam Proctor as Second PA Technician and James Petch as Stage Tech. Szabo and the Adlib team worked closely with Marco to ensure that all Warren’s requirements were met. At the stage end of the arena we find Ross Anderson supporting and coordinating all things stage audio and RF for monitor engineer Jon Ormisher. Szabo has previously worked alongside Warren, Anderson and Marco and commented that it was great to be back working with the touring family again.
Marco tours his own spec Firehouse control rack, so Adlib modified its Lake/Dante fibre-optic system to incorporate Focusrite D16R RedNet interfaces at FOH to take AES from the control rack to stage using Dante, where it was distributed as AES in to the LA8 amplifiers running at 96kHz.
‘It has been a real privilege to watch a true artist such as Florence, on top of her game in the live arena,’ Client Manager Phil Kielty says. ‘We have been lucky to work with Jim Warren on a Radiohead Tour and he really is a great engineer. Narci Martinez and all of his team have put together a stunning production and Marco, Jon, Ross, Jake & everyone involved was so welcoming to us. We look forward to the European Leg and working with everyone again.’
The tour goes to the US and Australia before returning to Europe for the end of the year.
More: www.adlib.co.uk
More: www.l-acoustics.com
