A recent two-and-a-half-week tour of North America saw Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós perform with a 41-piece orchestra. The outing marked the third phase of support from audio rental company 22live, who covered the band’s 2022 world shows, followed by European summer dates (where the orchestral idea was first introduced) and now tour dates in the United States and Canada.

Each wave of dates has seen progressive iterations of Martin Audio sound reinforcement, culminating in monitor engineer Throstur Albertsson changing his monitor set-up to use XE500 wedges to complement the band’s IEMs. More significantly, 18 of the manufacturer’s new FlexPoint FP4 were also used for orchestral monitoring.

22live Hire Director Paul Timmins has a longstanding relationship with Sigur Rós: ‘We needed some tiny speakers for the orchestra,’ he says. ‘I’d got wind about FlexPoint and when I attended a Martin Audio Open Day in April I discovered that Ingvar Jónsson – Sigur Rós FOH engineer – was also planning to visit because of a side project with Martin Audio he was involved with. He was impressed with the FP4 and XE500 wedges, and told the monitor engineer how great they were, believing the diminutive FP4s would be ideal for the orchestra.’

His colleague, Throstur Albertsson, duly adopted this solution for the orchestra foldback, but the challenge became one of timing. Martin Audio met the deadline by fast tracking the first production run in order to meet the first six orchestral shows in Europe.

Throstur admitted to having been disappointed with elements of his regular tiny monitors and readily acquiesced. ‘I was immediately impressed with how well FP4s sounded, and the fact they are coaxial with 100° dispersion means the tonality is really even. Mounting them was easy as I combined the tilt backet onto a mic stand and they do the job perfectly.’

Driven by his iK42 controller amplifiers, he is grouping the orchestra into eight sections, applying a separate mix for each of the groups. Asked about the XE500, he says ‘They are monsters – really loud, especially on something like the kick drum, albeit for the most part the band are on in-ears.’

For the US and Canada tour, as they have done with the recent Australian Pink Floyd tour, 22live shipped the entire audio inventory Stateside. As well as monitors, this includes both Martin Audio Torus and Wavefront Precision, marking a successful progression of the manufacturer with the band’s production team.

Martin Audio had been introduced by 22live for the first time at the Black Island production rehearsals, in 2022, where as part of a control package, a Torus system was included. When a European run was announced for the same year, 22live had the opportunity to provide a full PA, and the band’s production manager, Giles Woodhead, began conversations regarding the Martin Audio Wavefront Precision option.

‘Although FOH engineer, Ingvar, had been used to working with other audio brands, he trusted us, and the deployment was very successful,’ Timmins says.

This was also partly due to the fact that the Torus system had been so well received at the Black Island rehearsals that Ingvar was encouraged that the brand could deliver the result he was looking for, sensing that its underlying technology matched the best in the business.

Timmins also knew that the technical support team needed to be fully conversant with the latest Martin Audio products, and so nominated the experienced Joseph Pearce as system tech and Johnny Buck as PA tech.

The PA needed to cater for venues ranging in size from 2,500-16,000 capacity, so they arranged a combination of the large-format double 12-inch WPL and smaller double 8-inch WPS. ‘This combination meant that for the larger spaces the WPL could be deployed with WPS side hangs, while in the smallest of venues the WPL could remain in the truck entirely. In total, the tour had at its disposal 32 WPL, 24 WPS, 12 SXHF218 subwoofers, six WPM lip fill, and four Torus T1230 for fill.

Completing the audio package, Martin Audio iK42 rack were built in two double-bay 24U racks, keeping the packaging neat with integral 63A distribution utilising 22live’s new SES power distros.

Timmins is complimentary: ‘Everything about it feels premium, with a proper connector on the back, decent fittings, two options of how you hold the cabinet, and whether on a mic stand or in a little frame.’

Albertsson is already looking to the future. Aside from wishing he could have got his hands on more FP4s, he says, ‘I’d love to take a look at the FP12s for some additional monitoring requirements.’