54 Live Sound International March 2013 www.ProSoundWeb.com

Much talked-about UK actress-turned-songwriter Paloma Faith recently brought her distinct musical style and sizeable, glitzy set to London’s Ham-mersmith Apollo for a slick headline show that punctuated a successful concert tour.

Faith first started making waves in the UK music scene in 2009, with her first three singles all making the top 20. She’s been nominated for three BRIT Awards, and her second album, Fall to Grace, went platinum, peaking at number two on the UK album chart in the process.

For the tour, which saw Faith backed by a band of accomplished players, front of house engineer Huw Richards chose L-Acoustics KARA line arrays with flown sub-woofers, and has been impressed. “It’s my first time using KARA, and I like it a lot; it’s a very compact and light weight system,” Richards tells me during sound check in the near empty 5,000-capacity venue. “We needed a system that would be flexible but that still packed a punch, as the venues on the tour are all different shapes and sizes.

“We’re pushing it to its extreme here (at the Apollo),” he continues, “but because of the way we are able to configure it, it actually covers a room like this better than (L-Acoustics) V-DOSC or K1 would.”

SSE Audio Group, the sound reinforcement company for the tour, supplied 48 KARA boxes, 36 of which were utilized at this London show (two hangs of 18 per side). They were joined by three hung SB18 subwoofers per side, with all loudspeak-ers driven by L-Acoustics LA8 amplified controllers.

“We haven’t had to ground stack this system once, and the hung subs are more than enough; to be honest, KARA has not just delivered, it’s gone way beyond that,” Rich-

Fall to Grace Digital paths for Paloma Faith on tour.by Paul Watson

All Access Perspective of the stage at the

Hammersmith Apollo prior to show time.

Paloma Faith performing on

the recent tour, utilizing a Sennheiser MD

5235 dynamic microphone

element on an SKM 5200 mk II

transmitter.

www.ProSoundWeb.com

ards notes with a smile. “SSE is always my choice of PA company. They serve us particularly well, knowing exactly what we wanted and getting it just right.”

Forward ThinkingAnother aspect supplied by SSE is Richards’ DiGiCo SD10 digital

house console, joined by a companion SD Rack as well as some other inter-esting pieces. “Miles (Hillyard, SSE senior project manager) gave us some cool bits and bobs play around with, including the Waves PuigChild (hard-ware compressor/limiter), which works beautifully on Paloma’s vocal because

she has quite a peaky mid range,” he explains. “We have it on a setting that works well for her; it just catches the peaks and holds them back, and also fattens up the vocal nicely. We’ve also got a Waves Maxx BCL applied across the PA.”

Richards has favored DiGiCo con-

SSE system tech Perttu Korteniemi (left) and engineer Hew Richards at the house system DiGiCo SD10 console.

Monitor engineer Saul Skoutarides at his Midas PRO2 console.

56 Live Sound International March 2013 www.ProSoundWeb.com

:: All Access ::

soles for some time for functionality and sound quality reasons, and he offers specifics about how he’s using the SD10 on this tour: “I’m running 54 channels, and what’s great about this model is that I have 12 faders in each bay rather than eight, which is fantastic for drums. We have several snares and kicks, but I can pack the whole kit into one bay, which is ideal.

“I mix very hands-on – like an instrument, really – and this console allows me to do that. We use snapshots for faders and mutes, but that’s all.”

Perttu Korteniemi of SSE, the tour’s system tech, always gets to the venues early (“with the lampies,” he notes, grinning) to ensure all of the array hang points are in the right place. “I tend to work from a blank canvas every day, though I’ve been here at the Apollo before, so I had the room file, which

made things a bit easier,” he says. “I use L-Acoustics SOUnDVISIOn software 3D prediction software, and it’s excellent, though there’s no wizard element to it.

“A lot of this stuff is IP-based now.

If you have the dimensions of the room and good drawings, you can do a lot of prep work, which obviously gives you an advantage,” he continues. “With this (KARA) system, we only need two local crew members to hang it, because

Sennheiser G3 IEM systems racked up at the monitor position.

PSW LS1108.indd 2 7/6/11 3:23:15 PM

www.ProSoundWeb.com March 2013 Live Sound International 57

once propagated, it goes up so quickly. And after the show, the boxes are often down before the drum kit is, which is pretty incredible.”

It also points to the radical changes currently underway in live sound rein-forcement. This was further reinforced as Korteniemi showed me the sys-tem racks, noting that the signal path stays digital in traveling from the SD Rack to the SD10 to Lake processors at front of house and at the stage, all the way through to the LA-8 amplifier controllers.

“When the microphone and line level inputs hit the SD Rack on stage, their signals don’t go back to analog until it hits the speaker cables,” Richard says. “This method keeps it all simple, and level-wise, if it’s the input com-ing in and all faders are at zero, there’s no setting up of gains and no hiss. It’s all nice and clean, so when you open up the PA, there is no interference whatsoever.”

Technically FlawlessAt the monitor position, Saul Skoutarides works from a packed-out Midas PRO2 console, utilizing 54 channels and eight auxes in providing mixes to eleven Sennheiser G3 in-ear monitoring systems utilized by Faith and her backing band. Stage fill mixes are also supplied to L-Acoustics ARCS positioned to each side of the stage.

“I used to use G2s, which were great, but these G3s have better stereo imaging, better RF, better gain struc-ture, and a better sound board. They’re the best system out there right now,” Skoutarides states.

Faith favors a Sennheiser MD 5235 dynamic microphone element on an SKM 5200 mk II handheld transmitter for her vocal, which Skoutarides paired with a Sennheiser EM 3732 wireless receiver. “The 3732 has an AES out-put, which is great if you want to keep it digital all the way,” he says. “It’s in

the ultra-wide nGB range, which goes from 606-790 (MHz), so I can also use it as a scanner for the entire band, because my in-ear systems also fall into that band. That’s a real treat.”

The Apollo show in its entirety also proved a treat, with the expert work of the sound team resulting in a techni-cally flawless audio production. Credit should also go to Paloma Faith – this

is an artist that knows what she wants, from the set to the set list, and the show oozed meticulousness. A capac-ity crowd went home very satisfied after witnessing a concert that sounded every bit as good as it looked. n

PAUL WATSOn is the editor for Europe for Live Sound International and ProSoundWeb.