Toronto, Canada (August 8, 2011)–The annual Much Music Video Awards took over much of downtown Toronto’s busy streets for an entire weekend this year. A variety of sound companies were on-hand for the event, including Clair Canada using its Adamson PA system.
The show kicked off with a performance by Lady Gaga, followed by Far East Movement featuring Snoop Dogg, Bruno Mars, Avril Lavigne, Fefe Dobson and many others taking the stage. Canadian Justin Bieber showed up to support girlfriend and event host Disney-star Selena Gomez. Reportedly, 20,000 fans took up the streets to come see this live street event taking over the Much Music parking lot and bleeding to the adjacent Queen & John streets.
Clair Canada provided sound production on the Parking Lot and Intersection stages, with PA Plus taking care of Red Carpet and an additional stage inside the environment where The Black Keys and City and Colour performed. Other companies involved in lighting, staging and promotion of the event included J. Michael Elder Productions, Much Music Lighting Department/Christie Lights, Midnite Hour and Optex Staging.
The sound design for the street awards was designed by Dave Donin of Clair Canada, using Clair’s Adamson Y-Axis, SpekTrix and SX Subs inventory, paired with Clair’s proprietary P-2s. “It was a tough environment for the main stage, as we had to fit (the system) in amongst a lot of hanging set pieces. The system was designed using the shooter software and drawing the PA system into Google Sketch-Up, as the stage and set already existed in a full drawing already. This allowed us to make sure the PA would both cover and fit in the way we needed it to.” saod Donin.
The main stage system design featured two hangs of 12 Y-10 left and right of the stage, with a single center hang of six Y-10’s. A total of 16 SX Subs were placed on the ground, eight Clair P-2s were used as front fills, and a half-dozen SpekTrix 15 degree enclosures hung as a delay. The system was processed with Clair Dolby Lake Processors with AES input and powered by Lab.gruppen fP3400, fP6400, 20000Q PLM, 10000Q’s.
“It is very often that we are put in a situation where we need to make a PA fit in around all the scenic elements of a show,” said Donin. “The Adamson system did this extremely well and based on the design of the show, the only real problem spot was at front of house, which was placed in a tower that was shadowed from the PA. We ended up using large nearfield monitors as a solution.”
At FOH, Mark Vreeken & Peter Stoynich took the controls; at monitors, they had Danny Thomas, Russ Wilson, and Stein Guitton, and Jon Halliwell was systems engineer for the event. The FOH and Monitor consoles were all chosen because of artist preference, with one Yamaha PM5D used as a Master Traffic console on the Parking Lot stages, because it connected to the MADI broadcast network, therefore it had a full copy of any input that was needed and it was not loading down any primary host microphones or inputs. The console list consisted of five Avid Venue Profiles, Yamaha PM5Ds and a Yamaha LS-9.
Adamson Systems Engineering
www.adamsonsystems.com
