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