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Live Sound Diploma Students visit the O2
-Alchemea’s Live Sound students were lucky enough to spend the day at the O2 Arena with Chris Madden, FOH engineer for Sade and P!nk who talked them through the ‘get-in’ for Sade at the O2 Arena. Chris explained how the system tech designed the PA (L’Acoustics K1s) for each location. Our student’s witnessed the crew perform the PA’s time alignment, and hook into the house system, which covered the upper tiers.
Chris then talked about his mixing style and demonstrated how he set up the Avid Venue D-Show (the bigger brother of our own Venue Profile). He then introduced the other members of the sound crew, including their monitor engineer, who explained his in-ear system and how the low-profile side-fills were necessary to keep the stage clutter free. The Pro-Tools operator showed us his playback system and how it seamlessly switches to the backup system in the event of failure and the video engineer talked about MIDI syncing and gave an overview of the video technology required for such a large scale event.
Our student’s even made it onto the purpose built stage, to get feel for what it is like to play to an arena full of people.
All in all it was, according to the students, the “best day of the course!”
