Last weekend I did system tech for the FM4 Stage at the Donauinselfest in Vienna. For those of you, who don’t know about it, the Donaunselfest is one of Europe’s largest music festivals. It’s hosted on an Island in the Danube river in Vienna, lasts 3 days in June and attracts close to 2 million visitors each year.
The FM4 Stage is hosted by Austria’s most prominent independent-music radio FM4 and can accomodate close to 22,000 people if packed to the max. Acts this year included appearances by german hip-hop shooting star Marsimoto (he destroyed one M’elodie NF by kicking it off stage!), Samy Deluxe as well as austrian band Ja! Panik and a gig by the venerable Stereo MCs.
That gig got officially canceled by the authorities, but we let them play anyway, for 10 hot minutes, until the threats from the Viennese government got too severe… ha!
I did system tech, like I mentioned, working for Austrian PA rental company Vienna Sound. The PA System consisted of 2x 8 MILO speakers by Meyer Sound plus 10 700 HP and a total of 12 M’elodie as Nearfill (2), Outfill (2×3) and Center (4).
Monitoring was all Meyer Sound with 12 UM1P, 2 UM1C, 2 UPA, 2 PSW2s as Drumfill-Sub. I personally think the PSW2s really suck, since they always clip, even if just moderately confronted with Kickdrums. Unless you cut out all the sub-information, which is okay, since the PA subs were located under the front of the stage and clearly felt on top.
2x 8 MILO were enough for the natural arena in which the stage is located, but I could have used 2 more per side, budget wouldn’t allow it though. The entire PA was controlled by MeyerSounds excellent Galileo 616, I just love those filters!
I arrayed the 700s in an end-fired variety with 2×4 doing an end-fired subwoofer array for FOH sub pleasure, which most of the engineers appreciated, especially Samy Deluxe’s wonderful Tony Robbins, whose birthday coincided with the gig! The other 2 were there to spread the love around. But still, for a stage of that size 10 are a fraction too little and I had to neglect the outer areas of the arena, in favor of FOH and center. Especially those first 10m got maybe a little too much bass-love. But they were dancing all right!
What worked very well was to have a center cluster that was fed by a send of its own off of the PM5D at FOH. Most engineers followed my suggestion to just put the vocals in there.
I then summed this mix into the near and outfills and had great vocal intelligibility even in the first rows. This one’s a definite keeper.
The team was: Raimund Bretterbauer on Monitor System and Stage, Me as FOH Systech and planning the PA setup.
Below some pics. If you have any questions feel free to post here or write me.
