The Roman Amphitheatre of Caesarea was the setting for a recent series of shows from Israeli folk rock stars, Yehuda Poliker and Shlomi Shabat. The Israeli coast venue was served by technical production and rental specialist Argaman System (formerly the Mazuz Group) was chosen to supply the audio system, which included DiGiCo mixing consoles being used at both FOH and monitors, with a DiGIGrid MGB for the show recordings.
The performances called on the support of 24-strong band – three drummers, two bass players, two percussionist, three keyboard players, three horns, four backing vocalists and a violinist. In addition, both Yehuda Poliker and Shlomi Shabat played guitar, making around 100 input channels from the stage to FOH.
‘The set was almost three hours long, with both bands playing together for the entire time,’ says FOH engineer Eran Ben Zur. ‘The major challenge for the production was to ensure that the audience really experienced the celebration that was happening on stage as one complete package, while retaining the sound of each band and artist.
‘To accomplish this, we chose to use two DiGiCo SD8s at FOH, each accommodating one band, with desks connected via AES and Midi to control Snapshots. DiGiGrid MGB, using both ports at 48kHz, was used for recording a total of 128 channels.’
On stage, the focus was to combine the bands, with an SD10 and SD5, along with two SD-Racks, connected via Optocore. ‘Each monitor engineer travels with his own regular, stand-alone show file and both add the other stage rack to their session, controlling it as a slave using Gain Tracking,’ Ben Zur explains. ‘The SD10 is used as a master from the first of the two SD-Racks, with engineer Idan Zoar on top running Poliker’s band monitors, which total 13 stereo IEM mixes. The SD5 is a master for the second SD-Rack, with Shlomi’s monitor engineer Eyal Imber having a total of 12 stereo IEM mixes.
‘The entire console set-up worked incredibly well, and the event was a complete success,’ he adds.
More: www.optocore.com
More: www.digico.org
