David Guetta rings in the New Year with d&b.
Starting the year as they mean to go on, eclipse Staging Services supported one of the biggest and most anticipated New Year’s Eve celebrations in Dubai: the David Guetta NYE party at the Dubai Media City amphitheatre.
This is a venue with which the team at eclipse are well acquainted, a fact made apparent by the lack of requested changes after the initial rigging structure was built. “Nothing had to be changed, from the moment the client walked in, not even the trim heights of the trusses,” said head of the rigging department, Neil Spencer.
The eclipse audio department called into play a substantial d&b setup: thirty two J-Series TOPs for the main system, sixteen J-SUBs, six J-INFRAs and eight V-SUBs in sub array, plus eight Y-Series TOPs for the front fill and eight V-Series per side for the out fill – all powered by twenty nine D80s and four D20 amplifiers.
“This event constituted the largest d&b sound system ever deployed in Dubai,” explained Head of Audio, John Parkhouse. “It was a pleasant way to finish out a very busy year with a nice large system to a packed venue. I was in contact with David Guetta’s FoH Engineer, Carlos Herreros, well in advance of the load in, so together we fine tuned the requirements to fully meet his and our expectations.”
Carlos Herreros commented: “From the first email I shared with eclipse, I knew this was going to be a great show. The audio spec’ was spot on from day one, and they also sent me, several weeks in advance, a fantastic ArrayCalc file with a flawless PA design. So I was able to relax and forget about this gig until show day.
“Once we arrived on site my suspicions were confirmed and it was a beautifully presented system. John did a perfect job with the system design and optimization. Any concerns I had he knew exactly how to tackle them. We get d&b many times a year all over the world, and I have to say this has been the best, by far, I have ever had. The amount of detail was superb and beautiful, and the sub array John designed was impeccable and super sweet sounding, without losing any impact, complementing the tops perfectly, and with great coverage in a very wide arena.”
“We were very satisfied with the results,” confirmed Parkhouse. “Running AES/EBU and a fully ArrayProcessed system was simply stunning.”
