Barry Manilow is back on the road for ‘one last tour’ – and this time he means it.

Veteran live sound engineer Ken Newman has worked with everyone from Shirley MacLaine, Liza Minnelli, Engelbert Humperdinck and Paul Anka. For him the One Last Tour tour represents a unique combination of best practices he’s built for Barry Manilow over the past 23 years. He began working with Manilow in 1992, and is mixing with a Martin Audio MLA system for the first time, engineered by Delicate Productions crew chief Phil Reynolds.

In 1991 – when Newman was between mixing gigs – A-1 Audio sent him out as system tech for several of Manilow’s Showstoppers shows, with Paul Dalen mixing. When his ‘Greatest Hits’ tour was organised the following year and Dalen declined, he suggested they have Newman mix. For this final arena outing, Newman has moved to Martin Audio’s MLA system. Delicate Productions provided the system, which consisted of 11 MLA per side with one MLD down fill. Side hangs were a dozen MLA Compact per side. Three MLX dual 18-inch subwoofers per side were used in a cardioid configuration. Front fills were W8LM Mini line array enclosures.

‘I first heard about Martin Audio’s MLA from my friend Harold Blumberg, who had used it on a number of corporate events,’ Newman says. ‘Then I heard from various other industry heavyweights that I should check it out, so I attended a seminar at last fall’s AES Convention in Los Angeles called ‘Not Your Father’s Line Array’ focusing on the new digitally-steerable line arrays, and learned about the virtues of Martin Audio’s MLA, which sounded like just the thing for Barry Manilow’s show. I told Barry about these cool, new speakers and he said, I trust you.’

According to Newman, ‘The biggest challenge on the Manilow show has always been gain-before-feedback on Barry’s vocal mic, because he’s not comfortable putting the mic close to his mouth, and he’s not the loudest singer I’ve ever worked with. Those factors, combined with his desire for every aspect of his dense arrangements to be heard by his audience while keeping his vocal well on top of the mix, combine to make gain on his vocal mic a constant challenge.

‘Barry also frequently talks about how the entire audience should hear everything, with no one being offended by the show being overly loud, but at the same time by the show being loud enough to be exciting and moving. So I guess you’d call that the challenge of even coverage.

‘The MLA system allows me to spend less time walking the room because I have confidence that coverage is uniform throughout,’ he continues. ‘That allows me to concentrate on my main job, which is mixing the show and making sure the mix is everything Barry wants it to be. MLA doesn’t need much in the way of tuning, because we’ve already entered our target curve into the system’s software. Optimisation mainly consists of adjusting the delay times of the side hangs, subwoofers and front fills. It can be done in as little as 15 minutes.

‘With MLA, the level from the front to the rear of the seating area changes considerably less than with a traditional speaker system, and the tonal quality is significantly more uniform. Those are two of the main aspects of MLA that I really love, Knowing that I’m not scorching people in front of me with up to 10dB more level than at the mix position is very comforting. And knowing that people in the cheap seats are getting the whole mix and at a comfortable listening level is so great,’

A final show is scheduled to take place on Manilow’s birthday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where he grew up: ‘I look forward to MLA doing its thing and bringing the happiness of Barry Manilow to all the audience members equally,’

‘I worked as a system tech with Ken on Manilow at A-1 Audio, and I know MLA gives him exactly what he has always wanted out of a system – great sound, accurate representation of the music, and control of a system that adapts to the environment,’ says Delicate Productions President, Jason Alt.

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