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Applications, Concert
Lords of the Nürburgring. Rocking the Alterna stage with the J-Series
Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark and Rudolf Caracciola. Legendary Formula One drivers, famed for going full
throttle on the infamous Nürburgring. But as they rocketed round the ring, did they ever guess
that one day, in the not so distant future, crowds would no longer just flock to watch racing
daredevils push it to the max, but legends of rock and pop? As anyone worth their salt knows,
Nürburgring is now also host to Germany's biggest rock festival, aka Rock am Ring.
Rock am Ring was first staged in 1985. Then, a good seventy five thousand fans descended on the race track to watch
seventeen bands, including U2, Marillion, Saga, Rick Springfield and The Alarm. This year, all eighty five thousand tickets
were sold out well in advance. In total ninety eight acts took to the two stages in 2008, from Metallica to
Motörhead, from The Verve to The Fratellis, from Coheed and Cambria to Culcha Candela and from Manic
Street Preachers to Bad Religion.
Keeping the audio running smoothly on the "Suzuki-Alterna" stage was TDA Rental from Essen. The
Suzuki-Alterna was the second biggest stage at the festival and featured a string of international acts
ranging from The Prodigy, HIM and the Stereophonics to Queens of the Stoneage and Babyshambles, always
good for a headline or two, usually thanks to Pete Doherty.
Given the line-up and numbers, TDA was keen to thrash out good sound reinforcement and keep the audio
experience consistent for the whole audience with plenty of headroom on the bass, especially important
for bands like The Prodigy. Not wishing to make any compromises on the PA, Steve Todeskino from GF TDA
Rental and Tobi Hoff, the FoH engineer at the gig, brought in a recently acquired d&b J-Series. On hand from
d&b's Application Support was Martin Rode who helped with the system spec and installation. The main system
set up comprised fourteen J8s and two J12s down each side next to a separate row of six J subwoofers. In
addition to these were four Q1s as a centre cluster. The front area of the stage was covered using eight
Q7s and twenty four J-SUBs immediately in front of the stage as a distributed subwoofer array. The resulting audio
effect was completely uniform, with powerful bass reproduction from front to back and left to right.
Rock am Ring is known for its enthusiastic audiences, which this year ranged from twenty to fifty thousand, and
TDA were also enthusiastic about the festival. Summing the event up, Tobi Hoff says, "Out of the thirty or so
sound engineers, each and every one of them left the FoH after the show grinning like a Cheshire cat and
giving it a big thumbs-up. It's certainly a first for me. Everyone praised the consistant bass distribution
and the clarity in the high frequency range."
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