Flemish performer, Nathalie Meskens, whose soul music tour Meskens in Motown has proved hugely popular, selling out shows in theatres and concert halls across Belgium in addition to rocking numerous festivals.
Front of House Engineer Peter Claes chose Studio Haifax, a customer of CODA Audio’s Belgian distributor Viladco, to supply the audio and in consultation with the Dilbeek-based rental company, settled on a CODA Audio ViRAY system.
Claes recalled: “I’ve used CODA Audio AiRAY and ViRAY systems in the past and the flexibility they offer is key. This particular tour presented a mixture of venue types and sizes, so I was confident the ViRAY system could be tailored to meet the varying needs, without compromising the very specific Motown sound I would be trying to represent.”
Although Claes had used CODA Audio’s ViRAY before, on this latest tour, the system’s new pre-sets more than met with his approval: “The low mid is super warm sounding, which I really like and with the sub sensing system, I’m astounded by how deep the single 18” subs will go! We use 3 subs in cardio mode and a stack of 5 ViRAY cabs per side as well as 4 front fills at the lip of the stage. This gives us the perfect system for the medium to large venues of around 650 capacity – if we’re playing bigger shows we expand that to 6 subs and 9 ViRAY cabs per side.”
Peter’s system tech on the tour was Tim Martens, who stated: “Peter is a hard taskmaster and demands perfection at every show. The system’s consistency enables me to keep him happy day after day on the tour. The system runs digital by converting AES from FOH to LINET with the LINET Master and it sounds great. We use the analogue fall back system although we haven’t had a digital drop yet! Since the update to V1.2.3 it’s a pleasure to tune the system. I’m running LINUS live/remote software together with a Smaart measuring set up on a MacBook Pro and that works a treat – every show is plug ’n’ play! As Peter says, the system pre-sets are fantastic. It’s my job to time and phase align the system – if we need to EQ it’s because of room modes but at each venue we quickly get the result we want. Put simply, the CODA Audio system does a great job every night!”