Richard Liénard and his business partner
Jerry Eade are in the live sound business, with the explicit desire
to provide the very best sound to the very best performers. Pavarotti,
The Three Tenors, Bryn Terfel, Vanessa Mae, and Kiri Te Kanawa: the Sound
Hire portfolio is a list of the absolute cream of todays performers, each
of whom has a reputation for exacting standards in both performance and
technical support.
Because of this, Richard now uses the DPA range of miniature microphones
extensively on stage. Soundhire own over 40 of them, and deploy them across
the complete string section of the orchestra — violins, violas, cellos,
and double basses — whenever it needs amplifying. These are all fitted
using the standard DPA clip attaching the microphones behind the bridge
of the instrument.
Sound Hire's Richard Liénard on Pavarotti, quality,
and the benefits of using DPA miniature microphones.
"If we were going to be doing an open-air show with
just a pure orchestra on a stage with a good acoustic, the distance micing
method works and sounds the best, no doubt about it. But if you have a
rhythm section with the orchestra you don't have the proximity to the
instruments to overcome spill. In that case, putting the DPAs over
the string section makes a lot more sense and suddenly gives you a lot
of control. It gets you out of loads of problems."
"It's the best quality thing out there for the job it does".
Richard also has some interesting things to say about
doing such high-profile live work in a culture where visual appearance
is placed at such a high premium:
"Also there's the physical look of it. Last year we did the Bryn Terfel concert in North Wales where they wanted to make a DVD of the first night, a big orchestral thing with soloists. But if you go in there with a forest of microphones the Director just goes 'What's going on here?' With the DPAs it's just like 'Wonderful! It's just what we want'."
"So the visual aspect is now a very important consideration these days. Every gig now has a video screen because you're presenting these performers to a huge audience and they want to see them."
"Also there's the physical look of it. Last year we did the Bryn Terfel concert in North Wales where they wanted to make a DVD of the first night, a big orchestral thing with soloists. But if you go in there with a forest of microphones the Director just goes 'What's going on here?' With the DPAs it's just like 'Wonderful! It's just what we want'."
"So the visual aspect is now a very important consideration these days. Every gig now has a video screen because you're presenting these performers to a huge audience and they want to see them."
"It's the best quality thing out there for the job it does".
"They pick up the complete frequency range fine.
This idea that you need a large-diaphragm microphone to pick up low frequency
sounds is a bit of a myth. DPA are a company who are after excellence.
If they've got something small that sounds better than something big,
they're not just going to put out the big one because it's the fashion.
They're trying to educate in a way, they're pushing it forwards, saying
'this is what you can do, this is how you can approach things'."
"It's the off-axis response which is the important thing, that is why they sound so good. People don't seem to twig this at all. Each mic is picking up all the players around him and himself, so if the off-axis going into that mic sounds dreadful then that muddies the [overall] sound."
"It's the off-axis response which is the important thing, that is why they sound so good. People don't seem to twig this at all. Each mic is picking up all the players around him and himself, so if the off-axis going into that mic sounds dreadful then that muddies the [overall] sound."
For more information about Richard or Sound
Hire please visit their website.