One Direction entrusts the audio system of its 'Where we are' tour in the J Series of d&B

The British-Irish group One Direction, one of the great musical revelations of recent years, with millions of fans around the world, has used on its successful 'Where we are' tour a cluster-based audio system of the J Series of d&b audiotechnik, supplied by Wigwam Acoustics.

No one doubts that One Direction (1D) it's the 'boy band, of the moment. Formed in 2010 in London, the quintet composed by Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson became known during the broadcast of The X Factor contest in the UK.

since, his career has been metheoric and followed by millions of fans around the world, filling stadiums on all their tours. In the last of them, called 'Where we are' and with which Europe and South America have traveled this summer, the group has counted on its audio system with the technology of D&b audiotechnik.

The person responsible for Wigwam Acoustics, company responsible for supplying the equipment for the One Direction tour, Chris Hill, explains that "we select J Series clusters from d&b audiotechnik for a number of reasons and, chiefly, because this kind of environment is perfect for the J Series. We knew that arrangements with J8 would deliver superlative performance in any challenge presented by the show. Secondly, its relatively light weight makes it the perfect choice, because restrictions in this regard played an important role in final audio design".

As it is a large-scale stadium tour, one of the problems that Wigwam Acoustics staff had is that they couldn't install the equipment exactly as they wanted. Nick Mooney, systems technician this company, remembers that "due to the complexity of the stage and the design of the show, we couldn't hang up the J-SUB. We put all our attention into placing the SUBs to create a uniform and complete response in the different stadiums but, at the same time we had to avoid creating a huge hot spot of subwoofer for the public in the front rows. We achieve this through the precise positioning of the J-SUB and the creation of a subwoofer arrangement by using arrayCalc software from d&b".

Another challenge they faced was "restricting the number of speakers in each of the main riggings to twenty," Mooney continues.. nevertheless, this decision did not compromise its role of uniformly covering the total area of the stadiums. Everything was as expected and the J Series system worked exceptionally well in this type of environment. The concerts were crowded and, sometimes, the noise levels from the audience were quite shocking".

In this sense, Mooney points out that in the center of the stadium field was placed the B-stage hydraulic stage traction device about thirty meters from the main stage, "so that kids spent a good part of their time in front of the PA system, which is always a challenge for both monitor and FOH engineers".

In addition to the main arrangements of the J Series, Wigwam Acoustics technicians used outfills that covered up to about 150 degrees but, because of the big ticket sales for each concert, had to increase it to 200 degrees or even, sometimes, at 220 degrees, opted for additional V-Series riggings to provide the necessary accuracy and propagation.

Added to this were two delay towers, located about seventy metres from the front edge of the stage on the stadium field, to offer maximum travel of tracking cannons. "Delays were used to improve the main system at the back of the field area and lower seating levels," Mooney says., in addition to providing coverage at higher levels. We use a mixture of J8 and J12 along with some B2 subwoofer. The entire system was controlled through three XTA 448 FOH and D1 remote control software&b audiotechnik".

Other articles on db audiotechnik, One Direction, Wigwam Acoustics