Comedian Bill Burr performed the first comedy show ever presented at Boston's famed Fenway Park. When tasked with ensuring his jokes reached audience members near and far, Scorpio Sound Systems of Massachusetts turned to d&b audiotechnik products and solutions.
“From corporate events to full-scale arena and stadium concerts, the company has top shelf gear and personnel to satisfy artists, techs, promoters, and of course, the audience,” states Gary King, owner, Scorpio Sound Systems. “Audio is our passion, and it shows. We are proud to offer the area's largest selection of live mixing consoles and loudspeaker systems from d&b audiotechnik.”
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For the Bill Burr show at Fenway, Scorpio Sound Systems chose a d&b audiotechnik KSL and V-Series loudspeaker system for their unique technologies. “The d&b KSL loudspeakers were the right tools for the job,” said King. “We always use ArrayProcessing on the KSLs for the best results. Fenway is in a residential neighborhood. The stage is in center field and faces the tall stands, so it's easy to have coverage control. The noise level there, especially with musical events, is quite high, of course, but it's more about the strict curfew. Protecting the field and covering the seating are the goals that must be met.”
SL-Series is widely heralded for its well-behaved broadband directivity control, keeping sound where it’s needed and further enhanced when paired with ArrayProcessing for consistency of tonality and SPL throughout the vertical coverage.
The configuration for the Bill Burr show consisted of 20 KSLs per side (14 KSL8s and six KSL12s), side hangs of 20 V-Series per side (18 V8s and two V12s), plus 12 SL-GSUBs. “The four delays each had two J-SUBs and seven V12s on carts with pneumatic wheels to respect the field,” explained King. “Aiming up from that position is perfect for hitting the bottom to the top of the stands. This is a tried-and-true method that has been used there for years and it works well. We used 12 Y7P loudspeakers for front fill along with 12 M2s for artist monitoring."
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“First, I would like to say thank you to Gary and everyone at Scorpio Sound, most especially my Systems Tech Andy Vickery, for helping to make the Fenway show a huge success,” added Travis "Bickle" Walat, production manager and FOH for Bill Burr Slight Return Tour. “There are many times where my attention is directed to non-audio situations. Andy made it so that all I had to do was push up faders and focus on the show, instead of systems correction; that is something I am extremely grateful for.”
Walat said when he was the house engineer at a venue in DC, he learned a lot about ArrayProcessing and added “to me, it is the best advancement to happen to speaker technology in recent years. When combined with d&b's SL-Series, I feel that the clarity, fullness and presence is unmatched and creates the perfect canvas on which we can create art.”
