Delayed by the global pandemic, This Is Not A Drill – the seventh by former Pink Floys bas player Roger Waters as a solo artist – finally got underway in July 2022 in North America, Canada and Mexico before heading to Europe, Scandinavia and the UK. Scheduled to wrap in June 2023 at the AO Arena in Manchester having completed more than 80 shows, all in indoor arenas ‘in the round’, the tour is a platform for Waters’ take on politics, world affairs and the human condition.
The presentation of the shows –stage sets in particular – also reflects the scope of Waters’ songwriting, placing heavy demands on the technical and design capabilities of his support team. Audio system design and supply for This Is Not A Drill is from Clair Global/Eighth Day Sound, using a vast d&b audiotechnik loudspeaker system with Outline Newton Processors at its heart.
‘We are using three Newtons mainly because we have a complex arrangement of sends from the consoles to the loudspeaker system and also because we required a mirrored backup console system where we could just push the fader up and have instant output without any button pushes or any other time consuming processes,’ explains System Tech, Wayne Hall.
‘We use Newton #1 to take the first Madi send from the Main Avid S6L 192 engine into the Newton via coax to give us our principal inputs, which are main LR, subs and front fill LR – so, five inputs for the main system. We also take the same from the backup console’s engine into the second Newton via Madi coax, those then are sent via Dante to the first Newton. We then use the matrix DSP from that unit to feed our loudspeaker system, to which we send main LR (long side arena loudspeakers), side LR (short side arena loudspeakers), flown subs LR, mono groundstacked subs and front fill LR, so nine outputs to the main system.’
‘The third Newton handles the surround inputs and outputs. The inputs are a combination of Madi and Dante and we use the matrix DSP again to merge the two consoles together to give us the four AES stereo outputs to feed the surround system.’
Even though this is his first time out with Newton, Hall is a convert: ‘We use Newton’s ability to combine different audio formats, which it does with ease, which has been fantastic.
‘As end-users, it is very easy for us to use with no prior experience of Newton – before this tour we both had a short time using the software, and we worked out how we needed to use it, to make it do what we required, and it did it all.’
Sean ‘Sully’ Sullivan is at FOH for the tour and, with a resumé that includes Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Rihanna, he’s no stranger to mixing audio on this scale.
‘The Newtons do so much so well in 1U of rack space, it’s impossible to ignore them as the centrepiece driving our massive, intricate system. Add in the best sounding WFIR filters, simple ease of use, rock solid consistent performance, I can’t think of a better piece to cover what they do.
