Part of a major world tour, Bryan Ferry recently performed five nights in Germany, including a concert at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie where PM Blue provided an Alcons Audio FOH system.

PM Blue has been serving the Elbphilharmonie for many years, with the current team led by Project Manager Jo Stankowski. The main PA for this event comprised five stacked Alcons LR18/90 elements with BC543 triple-18-inch cardioid subwoofer, alongside BC543. Close-field fill was taken care of by four LR7/120 micro line arrays. The rearward sound system comprised six stacks of three LR7/120 elements each on a tripod, supplemented with two out fills of three LR7/90, between the main PA and the first rear fill. This configuration serves PM Blue as the standard Elbphilharmonie set-up for the lower listening areas. With minor adjustments, it has been used since the first rehearsals. ‘At the request of the artist, we doubled the bass here.’

A truss circle above the stage served the upper seating. This comprised Alcons LR18/90 arrays for each LR main, side and rear slope; Also a cluster of two RR12 point-source arrays as fill for the close field; For the low frequency support, a cluster of eight Alcons LR14B elements was used.

PM Blue’s goal is to make the sound in the concert hall as discreet as possible – a difficult undertaking with 70 loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling, as with the Bryan Ferry concert. ‘Imaging and fidelity to the original source are of great importance to us, which is why we try to follow the natural sound of the room,’ Stankowski explains.

‘In order to realise the imaging and the appropriate sound direction here, we worked for a long time on our sound system design and made changes whenever necessary. Basically, we did a great job when the listener wonders why, when he sees speakers everywhere, the grand piano is loud enough already...

‘Artists and sound crew were very pleased with the sound in the hall. After handing over, the crew only minimally adapted the system to their taste, especially the volume ratios of the individual speaker groups.

‘You often hear that Alcons sound very hi-fi, and that’s right. The systems are simply among the best possible sound transducers. Some have difficulty with that, as you can tell by the fact that it is often said that the speakers are not as loud as others. This impression often arises with people who expect the typical distortion of compression drivers with horns at the same sound pressure level. This side effect of nonlinear air compression and nonlinear deformation of the driver diaphragm at high levels fatigues the listener for a long time, but at the same time is perceived as “loud”. We counter that with examples such as the concerts of Iron Maiden, Kiss, Def Leppard, Iggy Pop or Volbeat,

PM Blue stocks a wide range of Alcons pro-ribbon systems, including the LR7, LR14, LR14B and LR18 line array systems, as well as the QR36 line-source array, VR8 and BF302 bass systems. For amplified control, Sentinel3, Sentinel10 and ALC2 are available in Hamburg.