The show that began life as an unsigned band night in one of Amsterdam’s smoke-filled brown cafés has risen to become a legend in its own lifetime. Vrienden van Amstel Live (Friends of Amstel Live) sold out seven shows at the 10,000 seat Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam in 2012, and is now the show to beat them all.

Ampco Flashlight providing the audio system to cover three stages featuring 17 top Dutch bands including Golden Earring and Kane. The shows used the most complex array of digital audio in the event’s history, with four DiGiCo SD7 consoles linked over Optocore 2 via seven of the latest DiGiCo SD racks running at 96kHz.

 

Broadcast by Nederland 3 and produced by Sightline, this year’s three-stage layout allowed singers to move from one stage to another accompanied by various bands. Each night finished with a battle of bands from south Holland – Rowwen Heze from county Limburg and, from county Brabant, singer Guus Meeuwis. The bands played opposite each other on the A and C end stages and their singers walked a large catwalk to face each others’ bands via the central B stage.

This meant the singers needed access to their in ear monitor mixes at any point along the length of the arena floor. Four DiGiCo SD7s worked simultaneously between stages A and B on a loop of the new Optocore 2 network, making it possible to send complete mixes from monitor set A to monitor set C via virtual input racks, a feature of Optocore 2. Stages A and B shared 112 inputs and 48 outputs, while Stage C had 56 inputs and 24 outputs.

Also new for the show were 24 of Ampco’s new Shure PSM1000 systems, which performed very well – admired by a lot of artists for their great dynamic range.

The PA had to deliver consistent sound to every corner of the house, without obstructing sightlines. The PA for Stage A was built into the set, and for sightline reasons the full PA surrounding the rear ‘C’ stage (two hangs of 40 Synco W8L Longbow cabinets plus underhangs of 24 W8LM Mini line arrays), was flown from moving trusses and raised out of sight as required.
Loudspeakers totalled 136 Synco by Martin Audio W8L Longbow and 24 W8LCs, with 25 Synco W8LM cabinets as near fills and rear fills, plus Synco WS318X cardioid subwoofers.

Speaker management was via XTA DP448s, controlled over ASE/EBU fibre optic using a Dante network with eight Dolby Lake processors, so the system ran completely digitally from the SD Racks on stage to the XTAs. 38 Synco CW-152A wedge monitors served the stages, with Synco subwoofers for drum fills.

Sound design was by Jeroen ten Brinke, with DiGiCo specialist Sydney van Gastel, production manager Jos van der Hoeven, FOH engineers Jeroen Bas, Ronald Koster, Remco Verhoek, monitors by Merijn Mols and Bennie Veenstra and five crew (Natasja Geerdink, Donny Koolmees, Erik Mertens, Mark Muis and Nick van Gaans) for patching and the wireless systems on the three stages.
 

Says Ampco’s Dieter van Denzel: “The benefits were the sound quality of the new 96kHz racks, and eliminating intermediate analogue conversion. People commented that it sounded like a blanket had been taken off the PA.”