After the extraordinary success of last years shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Luciano Ligabue returned for two nights in the famous temple of world music. For the first time, Luciano and his band composed of six elements, performed a best of repertoire relying on the sound of one of the most impressive RCF Active Line Arrays ever mounted indoors.
PA Product Manager Luca Cilloni, devised a unique configuration consisting of more than 100 RCF TT+ speakers in order to compensate for the oval shape and the difficult acoustics of the iconic theatre.
“The room was not designed for rock music, therefore, to obtain uniform coverage and full control of the emission pattern, adapting the sound system was quite complex,” said Cilloni. The critical factor was represented by low frequencies, cardioid configuration were chosen for both modules: the TTL36-A suspended and the TTS56-A was ground stacked. The configuration was then optimized by using the presets available on RCF’s RDNet platform.
“Basically the idea has been to divide the room into separate areas with three suspended TTL55-A. These were arranged to provide coverage angles of about 70 ° and evenly distribute the sound on all levels, all the way up to the highest stands”. Two TTL-33A arrays were used for coverage of the most lateral to the stage.
Ligabue is a legend of Italian music with an accomplished career over two decades with 16 chart topping albums, two highly successful films as a director, screenwriter and four best-selling books. At the head of the FOH, veteran engineer Alberto “Mind” Butturini, whose career also spans more than 20 years ensured Luciano and his band sounded amazing.
“The location was difficult,” says Alberto. “The sound is not that of a theatre, but rather that of a sports hall with problems of glare, especially in the lower and middle registers. It is difficult to produce a good sound when the room is empty, knowing that later we will have an audience that cries out to 98dB.” It is not exaggeration, given the enthusiasm of the audience made up 99% of fans coming from the large Italian community in London. But the results have been excellent, so much so that Butturini adopted its first experience with the Active Line Array peak of RCF as “extremely positive.”
Luciano’s production (including Alberto Butturini) participated in the demonstration expressly organized at the headquarters of the RCF of Reggio Emilia, hoping to hear something completely different as Alberto discussed. “I wanted to try a new PA system, in particular an Italian one, and the sound from the TTL55-A was exactly what I wanted. High quality and with the features I was looking for. Other systems may be too precise and definite, but the RCF TT+ system has a very pleasant sound in the lower and middle registers and a large punch, which surprised me.”
Once the decision to adopt the active platform TT+ was made, the design of the rig in London began. The main PA facing the audience was composed of an L / C / R suspension, with 14 modules TTL55-A (left and right) and 16 TTL 55-A for the central image. TTL33 12-A modules were suspended and served as out fill to the side areas, while two clusters of four TTL33’s were stacked on both sides at the level of the stage for front fill.
For low frequencies, nine TTS56 were placed beneath the stage in three by three sub-clusters in cardioid configuration (i.e.: two speakers facing towards the front and one facing away). To further strengthen the low frequencies, behind the central cluster another 14 modules of TTL36-A in two clusters of seven were suspended, also in cardioid configuration.
For monitoring on stage, in addition to TTL33-A, were a pair of sub – TTS28-A’s for lateral reinforcement, a TT2-A as a side fill monitor and a TTS26-A subwoofer as a reference for the drummer. All seven musicians received the whole mix full-range system by IEM, but they also had four TT45-SMA wedges. This gave a total of 102 TT+ modules!
The main PA system was controlled via RDNet, RCF’s networking protocol.
