Read Next: Name Behind the Name: Bill Putnam Jr. – Universal Audio

Home
/
Feature
/
Keith Urban Live

Keith Urban Live

Australia’s very own rootin’ ’n’ tootin’ cowboy had quite the homecoming, complete with a brand new Adamson line array.

26 July 2007

Text: Christopher Holder

I hate to be the one to point out the elephant in the room here… but what’s a bloke with the surname ‘Urban’ doing playing country music? It’s like an LA hip hop producer being called DJ Rural, or MC Primary Producer. Truly bizarre!

And why do country and western acts need so many guitarists? At times Keith’s got four on stage, including himself. And it’s not enough to play guitar like you sold your soul to the devil, you gotta get one-up on your comrades by finding some weird-arse left-handed 11-string bouzouki made out of a Ugandan gourd and tuned to a mode that hasn’t been used since Babylonian times. But… just at the point that you’re feeling kinda ‘in the zone’ with your left-handed pumpkin, the song finishes… and, believe me, it is complete anathema in hi-falutin Country circles to play the same guitar twice in one night. No sooner has your gourd stopped vibrating, your tech rushes on stage to plug in the custom two-string semi-acoustic lap-steel tea-chest that you’re so fond of. So you can only imagine what the breaks between songs are like! Keith Urban resembles a quarterback doing his best to not be sacked by a guitar tech team of defensive ends and nose tackles as they fly around the stage plugging and unplugging.

Steve Law is Keith Urban’s front-of-house engineer, and all these guitar-swapping shenanigans make his life interesting.

Steve Law: I like it, it makes things interesting. I just have a snapshot on the [Digico] D5 for each song, which acts as a starting point and mutes the stuff that doesn’t need to be on. There are so many instrument changes that you’ve got to make sure the stuff that’s not being used is off.

DSCN0017-pichi — FOH Engineer, Steve Law (left) and System Engineer, Jason Norman, explore possibly the most clichéd PA photo pose in the industry. And we let them!

TOKEN AUSSIES

Steve (along with Keith Urban, I guess) is the ‘token Aussie’ in an all-American touring party. He’s been mixing Keith for years, and this means he gets to play with expensive kit, amazing PAs and in enormous arenas week-in and week-out. Coming back to Australia to play somewhere like the Rob Laver Arena must be like Ian Thorpe doing a couple of laps of the backyard pool…

Steve Law: These are small venues compared to what we do in The States. That’s especially the case this year, as we’ve been in the ‘A’ arenas over there – last year was a mix of A and B. These places are all kinda like the size of the Superdome in Sydney, which means there’s a lot of vertical coverage to deal with – from the highest to the lowest seats. Then you’ve got some of the venues that are off the Richter scale – just huge. There’s the Staples Centre in LA, for example. That just massive – it’d be six times the size of Rod Laver.

CH: With lots of screaming cowgirls in the audience?

SL: That’s one of the biggest things I have to deal with – the volume of the crowd – and it’s very hard to get over the audience in some venues… especially at the start of the show. I mean, they just go crazy. You stand there and go: ‘well I think the PA’s on’. They quieten down eventually but there are moments where it’s ‘fingers in ears’ time. And there’s no point in fighting it. It’s silly to just keep turning the PA up – it defeats the whole purpose – you’ll turn it into a mad house!

I actually get a better snare sound from the overhead mic five foot away than I do from the snare mic.

MORE ON ADAMSON Y-AXIS

If you’ve never heard of Adamson before, don’t beat yourself up too much, but be prepared to hear a lot more in the near future. The company’s been around a while – Brock Adamson began tinkering in his shed back in 1983 – but has only really come to the world’s attention in the last 10 years. And now there’s a real buzz surrounding Adamson – its speaker systems are widely viewed as being in the top echelon. Adamson builds three arrays: the Y10 (which Norwest has) and the heftier Y18, while the compact SpecTrix array is normally purchased as downfill, but can also be slotted into balcony/delay duties etc.

Much like L-Acoustics, Adamson characterises its PAs as line source arrays, as opposed to the more common or garden-variety line array. The source of the ‘source’ distinction is the Y-Axis System’s proprietary Co-Linear Drive Module. Adamson’s ‘sound chamber within a sound chamber’ produces what’s described as ‘a perfectly curved, iso-phase, co-linear sound source of both mid and high frequency energy’. In other words, if you get all your sound (from the highs down to the low mids) leaving your box at precisely the same time then you stand to all-but eliminate time-smear, mid lobing and comb filtering – and, presto, you have a line ‘source’ array. To get the highs behaving properly Adamson employs a waveguide with a unique shape… a bit like L-Acoustics with its DOSC waveguide. Both the Y18 and Y10 offer 100 degrees of horizontal coverage and boast high SPL specs.

Adamson makes some of its drivers and are aficionados of Kevlar. The Y10 employs a proprietary 10-inch Kevlar cone with neodymium drivers. The monster T21 (dual 21-inch) sub also uses a Kevlar/neodymium combo.

Adamson is very proud of its rigging hardware and even has a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for it: AIR (Adamson Integrated Rigging). It’s based on a revolving disc to select the desired splay angle, which is spring-loaded and retractable – making it easier to pack away.

Adamson has developed its ‘Shooter’ software to give you a helping hand when you’re designing your system, and offers a bunch of sophisticated prediction tools.

There are a number of other speaker lines in the Adamson stable, including some wedges, and, of course, companion subs for each of the arrays, but Adamson isn’t anything like a JBL, Turbosound or Martin Audio – you’re not going to knock on the Adamson door if you’ve got a nightclub or restaurant to fit out – its reason for existence is to build and sell line source arrays.

Gathering-of-the-Vibes-Festival---July-2002-pichi

FILLING ARENAS

CH: What’s the trick to filling those larger spaces with hi-fi sound?

SL: It all starts with the band, and this year we’ve focussed on nailing that arena ‘thing’. That means keeping the guitar parts a bit simpler and a bit tighter. Anyone anywhere will tell you the best rhythm section in the world is AC/DC because they’re just so tight – the notes are so definite and precise. Our guys worked really hard to develop definite parts, rather than just a big wall of sound where they’re going at it all at the same time.

CH: Which must make your life easier?

SL: Sure. Now everything has its place in the mix without having to dig holes with EQ. Because that’s the normal technique: dig a hole in the EQ to fit that instrument in, then dig another hole for the next instrument… you end up colouring the tone of the instruments to make them fit into the mix. I’m not a big fan of EQ in the first place – I reckon if you have the right stuff on stage and the right mic then you should be able to just run it flat – so this tour’s approach suits me down to the ground.

CH: And I guess it’s about the tone of the guitars as well as the arrangements?

SL: Right. The guys have all gone through various configurations of amps… we’ve tried to mix and match a bit as well. Obviously if you play a Marshall head through a Marshall cabinet it’s very different to playing a Bad Cat head through a Marshall cab. After lots of experimentation each of the guys now has a unique tone, which makes it a lot easier to get them all sitting in the mix properly. There are times when four electric guitars are playing at the same time, and fitting that into a mix is usually a major effort. But we’ve got it working really well.

And Keith tends to lay back a bit more these days. Now there are more guitarists in the band, he can concentrate on his singing more and the parts he really needs to play – the solos – without having to be there the whole time, chugging away and filling up the sound. The other guys can cover that. He can take a back seat on the playing a little bit. And that helps with the mix. And when he comes in it just gets bigger.

THE NEW ADAMSON Y10 RIG

Norwest Productions has bought a new line array. It’s an Adamson system, the first in Australia, based on 56 Y10 enclosures, 12 T21 subs and eight SpecTrix underhang speakers. I know it’s only the middle of the year but it’s unlikely that there will be a bigger PA purchase than this one in 2007. The Keith Urban tour was the first outing for the Adamson system in Australia. Norwest were using 24 Y10s in Doha for the Asian Games, but this was the real baptism. The Y10 has big wraps on it and I was definitely intrigued to hear it in action and to find out what Steve Law and system engineer, Jason Norman, had to say.

CH: It must have been a bit of a buzz to unleash this system for the first time.

Jason Norman: It’s definitely exciting to get a new line array. And it was impressive from the first moment we turned it on.

CH: What intrigued you most about the rig prior to working with it?

JN: Personally, it was how the 10-inch drivers in the Y10 would perform and how full the sound would be.

Steve Law: Especially with this band. There are so many guitars… and a lot of volume coming off the front edge of the stage – about 108dB, in fact. The PA has to work hard to get over that…

JN: And it’s not working hard at all!

SL: Right. It’s handling it very easily.

CH: And the sound?

SL: I like the sound of it. The subs are the most amazing subs I’ve ever heard… Sensational. The T21 subs are awesome – a lot of low end.

CH: Seems like there’s a bit of a jump from the 10-inch speakers in the Y10s to 21-inch speakers in the subs. No issues with how the subs and the Y10s cross over?

SL: No. There’s a lot more low-end coming off the 10s than what I’d thought. And T21s… originally we flew some subs up in the air and ended up taking them down – we didn’t need them.

Jason: We’ve ended up with four a side on the ground. We’ve gone from six a side to four a side.

SL: Actually we’ve gone from 12 a side!

JN: That’s right. We’ve gone from six in the air and six on the ground, to none in the air and four a side on the ground. So that’s how efficient those subs are. Pretty wild.

CH: They certainly sound even and phase coherent to me.

JN: The coverage is very even and it’s phase coherent right down to the low-mids.

SL: I notice on the analyser – we’re using Smaart Live – that the system tracks almost perfectly – whatever goes in, comes out. It’s as close to perfect as just about any rig I’ve used. So in that respect the phase coherency seems to be really on the money. Especially in the deader venues where the reflections from the side hangs don’t come into play.

CH: Is it easy to rig?

JN: You have to do your homework but we started at 9am and it was up by lunch.

CH: And what are you using in the drive rack?

JN: Dolby Lake Processors – two a side – all controlled wirelessly on the tablet PC and all interfaced with Cat-5. It’s a neat setup and easy to control. We use Lab.Gruppen fp6400 amps. There are 13 racks of six amps, although there are some spares amongst that lot.

VICE ROYER

CH: I notice you’re double-miking Keith’s guitar cabs.

SL: He uses a custom amp hand made by a guy in the US. They’re called 65s. He specifically made these ones for Keith. They’re a little higher powered than the normal ones he builds. And the cabs have two different drivers, and totally different tonal qualities come out of each driver. So we double-mic them. I use a Royer ribbon on one driver and a Shure SM57 on the other, and the combination of those is really good – the Royer’s really warm and the 57 gives you the poke and smack.

CH: A Royer 121 on tour, in front of a full throttle guitar cab? That’s a big call.

SL: It is an expensive mic and it is very fragile – if it gets dropped it’s history – and I’m not saying we didn’t umm and ah about it for a while; but it’s the best mic around. When we go into the studio we put a Royer up, so why not do it live? And these types of shows, where no one else comes near it, it’s not so bad. When we get to the festivals we might need to re-think things – there’s no way I’m going to let some stagehand chuck it around.

CH: Any other examples of microphone bravery? A Neumann U47 on the kick perhaps?

SL: I’m using another Royer – a stereo SF24, which is an insanely expensive mic – for drum overheads. But it’s absolutely amazing. Truly amazing! The best overhead mic I’ve heard. It sounds totally transparent… you can almost do away with the rest of the drum mics.

CH: Well, I notice that you’ve placed the SF24 quite high – it’s evidently more than a ‘cymbals mic’.

SL: Yeah, it’s funny, because I actually get a better snare sound from the overhead mic five foot away than I do from the snare mic. It’s a thicker and nicer tone.

CH: So do you find yourself pushing up the overhead mic more these days?

SL: With that mic I do. I’ve definitely got more of the overheads than any other mix that I’ve done. Most other mics catch too much of the highs and it just doesn’t sound real. With this mic, you put it 10 feet away and it sounds the same as if you’re two feet away. There’s no proximity loss – you’re not losing all that nice warmth and fullness of the cymbals instead of them just going tssss, tsss, tssss. And I can run it down all the way to 150Hz. That’s something you don’t normally do with overhead mics, you’d normally be rolling it out about 300 to 400Hz. It just sounds so nice… it even picks up the kick drum nicely!

From our tests, we get around 6dB more out of each T21 compared to any other dual 18 we’ve compared it against.

INTERVIEW WITH MANAGING DIRECTOR, JESSE ADAMSON

Christopher Holder: Seems like the market for big line arrays isn’t going away.

Jesse Adamson: One of the comments I used to hear in around 2001 – early in the life of the Y-Axis – was “Oh, everyone’s got a line array now”, and they’d talk about it like it was a fad or something. I strongly disagree with that. Some people have jumped on the bandwagon, but what Christian Heil introduced with the V-DOSC system was probably the first big step forward in PA technology in years.

CH: Adamson describes Y-Axis as line source systems, which is largely down to how you get your high frequencies ‘coupling’, right?

JA: Right. You can’t simply line up a bunch of HF horns adjacent to one another and stick them in a sausage shaped box and expect the system to behave like a line source. It doesn’t. They overlap, they interfere, and they don’t work correctly. Then there’s the issue of driver spacing – drivers need to be placed half a wavelength away from each other to couple effectively. We’ve known that theory for more than 50 years but you look at half the designs on the market and they still don’t follow those rules. So yes, to have a line source array you have to find the optimal driver spacing and you need some kind of wave shaping device to fix the HF section.

CH: I’ll get you to confirm or deny an interesting story I picked up from the rumour mill. Namely that your dad Brock, during a visit to France, was locked up and then deported for ripping off L-Acoustics’ DOSC lens design.

JA: That’s the best one I’ve heard! I’ll make sure I pass that one on! Here’s the real story: back in 2000 we did have a sound chamber seized out of a PA system by some French official – L-Acoustics had sued Adamson and it was wrapped up in that investigation. Regardless of how close our design was to the L-Acoustics design, we developed it based on the belief that the JBL 2405 slot tweeter constituted ‘prior art’. Anyway, L-Acoustics was a bigger, stronger company than us and we didn’t want them smacking us around so we immediately re-tooled and designed a different sound chamber and recalled all the existing stock that was in the market. I think it was a blessing in disguise in the end, because the new sound chamber works better. We’re happy. And in the end L-Acoustics’ patent was struck from the records.

CH: The mids and highs are mounted co-axially, is that correct?

JA: Yeah. We call it a ‘sound chamber within a sound chamber’. The high frequency chamber creates a bunch of cells with different path lengths, which itself sits inside a clam shell-like mid range horn that wraps around it. So the midrange device goes into these two slots on the outside and the HF fires through the centre of it.

CH: Tell us some more about the T21 sub. It seems like a complete brute.

JA: This is Brock’s design and I can’t take any credit for it but… the T21 is a seriously impressive device. We’ve created a system with a long voice coil former – it’s a six-inch dual coil with a really long coil former – and we have a spider at the very bottom of the coil former, a spider at the top of the coil former and a third intersection where the cone connects. So what you have is the first large-format woofer in our industry that has really tight tolerances and great heat dissipation – again, because of this great, stable, suspension system. If you take a look at another great design – for example, Doug Button’s dual coil device for JBL – it doesn’t have the back spider. So they have this really long coil that floats around inside the gap. Because of that, they have to increase the gap size to give it some clearance as it moves around. But when you increase the gap size you have all this air insulating the coil, which, in turn, causes thermal power compression as that air heats up. By having that back spider in there, the voice coil stays still – there’s no lateral movement whatsoever – and you have these really tight tolerances (no significant air gap), which pulls all this heat away. We dump a whole Lab.Gruppen fp6400 into one of these subs – one driver takes one side of a Lab 6400 at 2Ω. It’s a pretty monstrous thing. From our tests, we get around 6dB more out of each T21 compared to any other dual 18 we’ve compared it against.

CH: The 21-inch drivers of the T21 marry okay with the 10-inch drivers of the Y10?

JA: Definitely. People immediately think of the 21s from the past, which had a reputation for being sludgy and slow. But this is purely about the relationship between the magnetic force in the motor and the number of windings. By which I mean, it doesn’t matter how big the moving mass is – within reason of course – so long as you have a motor that’s strong enough. In the past, if you used a ferrite magnet, it was almost impossible to get enough magnetic flux to do the job. You’d have this massive magnetic structure. Neodymium changes all that. We’ve built a six-inch neodymium slug that’s about three quarters of an inch thick – it’s the biggest piece of neodymium that I’ve seen anyone use in a speaker.

Elsewhere in Steve’s rack (not pictured) is a G5, used to run Cubase SX3 and record the shows straight off the mic pres, via MADI straight into a recorder. “We can take it straight to a studio and do what we like with it.” The G5 is loaded with two RME MADI cards, and 2 x 300GB serial ATA drives, striped as a raid array. “Also very handy for virtual soundchecks to fine-tune stuff.”

DRUMS – TIGHT AS

CH: You’ve got two ELI Distressors in your rack, which I gather are for keeping the drums in check?

SL: That’s right, they’re for the kick and snare. We have two kick mics, which I’ve grouped to a mono bus then send out to a Distressor and back to the console. It works pretty hard. Distressors are great ’cause you can be hitting 10 or 12dB of gain reduction and you really don’t know that you are, until you hit bypass… The snare Distressor isn’t doing a huge amount of work but enough to keep the sound more consistent.

CH: Then you’ve got an ELI Fatso as well?

SL: Yes, the Fatso is on the rest of the drum kit. Saying that, it doesn’t really do a lot of compressing. It takes a little bit of the highs off when our drummer really starts slamming the cymbals, but it’s mainly there to keep the latency the same between the kick, snare and the rest of the drum kit.

CH: Really?

SL: Well, obviously when you go out of a digital console to an insert device, you’re going through a set of digital converters and back in again analogue… you get about a 5ms latency going on. So if I send the rest of the kit out and back in, it brings everything else back in time. If you take the Fatso out you hear it kinda flanging. The toms sorta go c’hoah c’hoah… really strange tone.

CH: So the Fatso is a very expensive delay compensation device then.

SL: Yes! But it does do something. You can tell when it’s not there. I’m running it in Transformer mode on the output. Which warms it up.

CH: Tell me about the vocal mics?

SL: They’re all on Shure Beta 87Cs hardwired for the background vocals and Shure UHR wireless for Keith’s. He has six mics set up in strategic locations around the stage. I send all the vocals to a stereo group and then they go through a pair of Crane Song Trakker compressors.

DUMB & DUMBERER

CH: Apart from the obvious differences in scale, do you notice much of a difference when you return to Australia for a tour?

SL: I find the stagehands here are generally better. The companies here try to make an effort to train them to actually know what they’re doing. There will be specific people that know audio and people who know the lighting. So if you’re touring with a PA that they’re familiar with, you can walk away and let them fly the whole thing. You couldn’t do that in the US, not in a pink fit. Not to mention the unionisation in the US. There are guys over there who will push the PA to the bottom of the truck and different people who will push it up the ramp and a different bunch of guys that load the truck… and they don’t ever leave the truck, they just sit in the back of the truck and talk to each other all night… ’cause the truck drivers pack the truck – ‘they know the pack’. There’d be times in the US when I can remember just yelling at the hands… because they seem to have no idea. You say, ‘take the lid off the case’ and they just look at you like, ‘what’s a case?’, ‘what handle?’. They must get these people from just anywhere. So that makes the days pretty long over there. Saying that, we’ve had some frustrating times in Australia as well… so there’s room for improvement all ’round.

REVIEWED