Johnston Audio supplied the bulk of the audio equipment for the Robbie Williams stadium tour of Australia. The tour was a huge success – 9 sellout shows to more than 400,000 people!

The JAS system and crew delivered everything and more! The preparation and presentation of the system received many favourable comments and Robbie’s FOH engineer Dave Bracey said that the system was fantastic.

Johnston Audio supplied 54 L-Acoustics VDosc cabinets traveling on dollies of 4 to make the setup and pack-down faster. The two front inner hangs had 15 VDosc/side (specially painted cabinets supplied by Britannia Row) and the front outer hangs had 12-15 VDosc / side. There were 2 delay towers of each with 12 VDosc.

The VDosc cabinets were powered by Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers.

The Robbie Williams tour necessitated the design and construction of a flying version of the Wayloud subs. Similar to the L-Acoustics 218, 24 flying-version Wayloud Subs were built for the tour and flown in a vertical hang alongside the outer VDosc arrays. Another 24 Wayloud subs were positioned in stacks of 6 across the front of the stage.

The system design also had 18 L-Acoustics ARCS boxes in pods of 3 across the front edges of the stage.

The whole system was controlled by 16 Dolby Lake controllers and a barrage of computers supplied by Britannia Row.

Sheriff L Babari was the system designer and toured with Robbie Williams.

Dates

30 November 2006
December 1, 5, 9-10, 13-14, 17-18 2006

Johnston Audio Crew List

Robert “Jock” Bain – Crew Chief & Delays
Doug Pringle – VDosc system rigger
Peter O’Leary – VDosc system rigger
Connor Dune – Monitor rigger / operator

System

54 L-Acoustics VDosc
48 Wayloud subs
18 L-Acoustics ARCS
16 x Wayloud wedges
12 x Crown 24×6 amplifiers
1 x DiGiCo D5 112 EX console
8 x Camco Vortex 6 Amplifiers
18 x Crown VZ 5000 Amplifiers

The Oasis Australian tour saw Bruce Johnston finally make it home after almost a year of touring. The Oasis juggernaut is an amazing phenomenon, with the band pulling enormous crowds throughout Europe and the Americas, with a huge resurgence in their popularity.

The Oasis shows sounded amazing, with 32 Nexo Geo-T elements and 16 Nexo CD18 subs powered by Camco Vortex 6 amps.

Bruce operated on his DiGiCo D5 console, while former Aussie Ian Newton operated the monitor rig from a Yamaha PM1D console.

The Oasis Australian tour was sadly the last tour for Johnston Audio by Drew Menard, who has moved on to look after the DiGiCo brand for Group Technology. Other Johnston Audio crew on the Oasis tour were Ivan Ordenes, who rigged the FOH and Mark Crawley who rigged the monitors.

Dates

December 14-16 2006

Audio production for Kylies’ triumphant Showgirl Homecoming tour, which kicked off on November 11 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre was supplied by Jands Production Services. Front of house engineer Chris Pyne specified an L-ACOUSTICS system consisting of 48 V-DOSC elements, 32 SB 218 subs, 16 Arcs and 18 dV-DOSC cabinets. The system is powered by 66 Crown MA5002 amplifiers.

JPS used the Kylie tour to debut one of its new Dolby Lake Processor (DLP) drive racks made up of 4 x LP4D12 units and a Motion 1200 wireless tablet.

“They sound very, very nice,” said Pat Richardson, JPS’s crew chief. “I believe that they are quite a marked development audio wise and you can definitely hear the difference.” Other JPS crew on the tour includes Cameron Elias, Dave Richardson and Simon Farrell.

Chris Pyne is also trialing an experimental convolution reverb that Dolby/Lake has produced

“As far as I know it’s the only one that exists,” Chris revealed. “It can alter parameters by computer, convolution reverbs are usually just a sampled space such as a room and that’s all you get. This model has sampled spaces that you can adjust the parameters on and that’s very interesting. Bruce Jackson, who works for Dolby, spoke about this prototype when I visited him in the US recently where he is doing front of house for Barbra Streisand.”

Dolby Live Sound

JPS has added a Digidesign VENUE D-Show™ system to its already extensive range of consoles.
Greg Nelson pictured with the Digidesign Venue console at Sydney’s Acer Arena

Speaking about the purchase JPS General manager, Jim Straw, said “JPS purchased the Digidesign VENUE as part of our commitment to supplying the latest technology to our clients. Due to its stable platform, reliability and constant appearance on technical riders. We are now the first rental company in Australia to offer a fully optioned 96ch D-Show Console.”

The Digidesign VENUE console has made its debut for JPS on the current Pearl Jam tour with front of house engineer Greg Nelson in the drivers seat. Having graduated from a Midas XL4 to a Yamaha PM5D last year, Greg decided to switch to the VENUE console four months ago.

I’m very comfortable operating the VENUE, stated Greg at the band’s sold-out Sydney gig. It’s laid out so well and is very user friendly. It sounds fantastic and makes my job so much easier. I can go anywhere with just my USB key, plug into the console and my whole mix is up. I believe that making the switch from an analogue console to the VENUE is easier than any other digital console. You’re not consciously thinking about how to do things, you just find yourself doing it instinctively. It makes the mixing more emotion driven than cerebral.

Greg believes that the wide variety of plug-ins available for the VENUE bring a whole new element to a live digital console. They add all sorts of different colour to everything, he said. It makes the console a lot of fun to mix on.

The Pearl Jam audio rig supplied by JPS also included an L-Acoustics V-DOSC speaker system, Crown amplifiers and BSS system drive whilst the band tours its own monitoring equipment.

JPS has been fantastic and Paul Schofield in particular has taken great care of me, added Greg. When turned on, the PA sounded just as it should and that’s all you can ask for. Everything I requested via email was here and working perfectly. The JPS crew (Tristan Johnson, Guy Gilchrest and Tim Seconi) are nice, pleasant to be around and it’s been a really good experience.

Digidesign

JPS has upgraded its monitor systems with the purchase of an additional 32 Clair Brothers Audio (CBA) 12AM monitor wedges, 48 Crown MA3600 amplifiers and 12 CBA custom Dolby Lake Processors.

Photo: Jim Straw, JPS General Manager, Justin Baird, Product Manager, Dolby Live Sound Group, and Brad Adamson, JPS Operations Manager, show off some of the new monitor racks.

The new monitor racks debuted in September on a national concert tour by Australian electro-rock band Rogue Traders. ‘This is the best monitor system I have ever heard, they sound absolutely fantastic.’ said monitor engineer Ben Shapiro after the event. ‘After I ran the 12AMs with the new Clair Dolby Lake Processor presets, I left my outboard equalisers back at the shop.’

The Dolby Lake Processor provides a unique set of features for monitoring applications, including reference quality audio converters, the Iso-FloatT ground isolation system, and patented low-latency sample rate conversion. Coupled with the SmaartLiveT Controller, the Dolby Lake Controller integrates RTA and Spectrograph displays within the EQ user interface to provide immediate identification of feedback and spectrum analysis.
Dolby Live Sound

Based on the life, songs and music of the entertainer and song writer Peter Allen, and performed for the first time in 1998 in Sydney, The Boy From Oz has just closed after a sell-out 3 month Australian tour. This new production of the original musical especially designed for large arenas, included a 25-piece live orchestra and 100 singers from the Australian Girls’ choir. Australian V-DOSC Partner, Jands Production Services, was chosen to design and supply the sound reinforcement.

Sound designer Michael Waters – who won a Helpmann Award for Best Sound Design for Dusty: The Musical – specified a L-ACOUSTICS V DOSC system which includes 36 V-DOSC, 27 dV-DOSC, 4 ARCS and 18 SB218 subwoofers. Jim Straw, general manager of Jands Production Services, stated that, “The Boy from Oz is a complex and ambitious arena musical theatre spectacular. This production has unique audio requirements and demands a very different approach to live concert arena tours. Jands Production Services provided a complete audio solution for the tour which included design and technical expertise, eight sound operators and technicians, along with the latest state of the art equipment including a V-DOSC speaker system.”
ABC review

Photo – Jeff Busby

From outside Australia please call your international code +61 2 9364 7500

JAS supplied DiGiCo D1 FOH and Monitor package for Simple Minds Asian and Australian tour.

Simple Minds’ Production Manager John Armstrong called to say that they were finding it hard to get the consoles for the Asian leg of their tour and fortunately JAS was able to supply a package including 2 x DiGiCo D1 consoles, 2 x Local racks, 1 x Stage Rack, 1 x return system and 1 x FOH FX system was dispatched to Hong Kong.

JAS also provided a V-Dosc PA system for the Simple Minds’ Palais Theatre show in Melbourne. The system included 18 V-Dosc elements and 16 Wayloud dual 18’ subs powered by Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers controlled by 3 Lake Contour processors.

Jock Bain was the CVE, Doug Pringle looked after FOH and Adrian Barnard rigged the Nexo PS15 monitor system.

Dates

May 3, 7, 9, 12 2006

Dates

April 13, 15-16, 18-19, 21-24 2006

System

24 x Nexo Geo T 2405 line array
6 x Nexo Geo T 2815 line array
18 x Nexo Geo S line array
16 x Nexo C-D sub
Camco Vortex 6 Amplifiers
Nexo NX241 / Lake contour controllers

Consoles

Midas XL4 FOH
Midas H3000

Monitors

Wayloud monitor system

JAS crew

Bruce Johnston – FOH engineer / Production manager
David Quigley – System technician
Saul Skoutarides – Monitor operator
Craig Gordon – monitor rigger

Producer/rapper Kanye West performing before sold-out crowds in Australia. West was scheduled to open for U2 on their Vertigo tour of Australia, but after the Irish rockers postponed those dates West decided to proceed with the shows on his own.