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MTV Awards – Fifteen live bands have a perfect night

Norwest Productions provided a very large audio system for the third Australian Video Music Awards (known to us all as the MTV Awards) held late April 2007 in Sydney’s Acer Arena. Norwest has done every one since they started. The first one was held in Luna Park and used a sixteen cabinet EAW KF730 mid sized line array system. These days the event is huge.

The main music system consisted of fifty six Adamson Y10 line source array cabinets and twelve Adamson T21 subwoofers all flown. The Y10s were flown as three clusters – two of nineteen elements and one of eighteen. Eight Adamson Spektrix were used for front fill. A small cluster of EAW KF750/755 was used to increase the horizontal coverage after a decision was made to open up more seating for sale following enormous demand.

A separate system was flown for the speech PA to cover a totally separate stage in the middle of the room used for the awards. This consisted of forty eight L’Acoustics KUDO flown and six EAW KF730 as frontfill. All speaker cabinets were powered by LabGruppen fp6400 amplifiers.

Front of house duties for all acts (except Eskimo Joe and Silverchair) was mixed to perfection on a Digico D5 112/EX by Ian “Shappy” Shapcott who has mixed all three shows to date. The extremely complicated series of monitor mixes was handled superbly by Tristan Johnson using a Yamaha PM1D. The all important awards were separately mixed by Ian Cooper using a Yamaha PM5D/RH.

Norwest provided a crew of thirty three technicians ably led by Project Manager Ewan McDonald a veteran of many large shows including Rugby World Cup 2003, Commonwealth Games 2006, 15th Asian Games Doha 2006 and 18th Gulf Cup Abu Dhabi 2007.

The broadcast mix used the Figure 8 Audio Mercedes bus with Audio Director John Simpson at the helm.

CREW

GEAR Band PA 56x Adamson Y10 12x Adamson T21 8x Adamson Spektrix 4x SB850 4x EAW 755 2x EAW 750 1x D5 1x System 6000 1x TC2000 1x TC D2 1x Distressor Speech PA 48x KUDO 6x EAW 730 1x PM5D 2x XTA SIDDs

Drive
108 Lab Gruppen 6400
4x DLP
4x Contour
4x MESA EQ
Entire PA was driven using Optocore Fibre System. Allowing us to keep the signal digital from the stage box to the amplifier. This was especially handy considering the run to the roof racks is about 200m from the FOH desk.? System worked flawlessly from start to finish.?

Monitors
1x PM1D
40x NEXO PS15
12x EAW 730 Flown Sidefill

Patch
10x DS800
64 line Optocore Fibre System to broadcast truck with head amp control so Simmo could control Optocore gains from the truck
30 L&K Multipin Stage Box System

RX/TX
14x Shure UR4D with Wireless Workbench Control
1x WIN Radio
1x RF Level Meter
6x Shure PSM600
8x PSM700
4x PSM200
2x 30W RF Amplifiers
2x PA 821

Red Carpet 48 Channel Optocore Fibre System. The run to the red carpet was around 300m. Head amp gain control was achieved on the M7CL in the truck 6x Funk 1 Res 4 6x Res 218 ACTS PINK Eskimo Joe Fergie Good Charlotte Teddy Geiger Damien Leith Sneaky Sound System Billy Talent 30 Seconds to Mars Toby Rand TV Rock VS Dukes of Windsor Stephanie McIntosh Silverchair Evermore Good Night Nurse Bliss n Esso

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