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Interview: Rüdiger Nürnberg, freelance sound engineer

Interview: Rüdiger Nürnberg, freelance sound engineer

With regard to festival sound, what would you say is the greatest single challenge confronting PA suppliers and therefore also manufacturers such as Electro-Voice?

Rüdiger Nürnberg: I think good PA manufacturers provide a product portfolio, which - thanks to consistent sound and variable dispersion angles - always guarantees homogenous coverage without having too many individual systems within one product range.

What techniques do you use to minimize spillage between stages situated closely to each other?

Rüdiger Nürnberg: You cannot compensate the extremely important physical distance. Of course, you can influence the dispersion in the lows with the according array arrangement. In reality, this will be where the greatest influence will be. With regards to the tops, this however is limited. Towards the rear of the system, you can certainly minimize the sound through appropriate structural measures. But apart from careful planning the angles of the arrays, you quickly run out of options. In my opinion, it’s not about sheer product characteristics as long as we are only using high quality products - the challenge is picking the right products in order to fit each individual situation and using them correctly.

To what extent are regulatory changes or future measures affecting work in this area?

Rüdiger Nürnberg: The common sound level regulations are sensible and still allow for a powerful sound. For this reason it is necessary to create a homogenous coverage and avoid having areas with extremely high sound level peaks whereas other areas are not covered sufficiently. To guarantee a homogenous sound for the whole audience, I think it is possible to create powerful sound in all areas without breaking the regulations. Here in Germany it is interesting to see how the regulations might affect working hours in the next years. I expect there will be significant changes - which will strongly affect festivals. In the end, there will be two possible scenarios: Either there will be multiple-shift operations throughout the whole festival or the festival opening hours will be shortened so multiple-shift operation won’t be needed.

Please give some details of a recent festival where your solutions have made a major difference to a formerly problematic audio set-up, re spillage etc.

Rüdiger Nürnberg: This is difficult to say. Usually the crew will be replaced if the results continue to be poor - so it’s hard to have a proper comparison.

Please give a few hints of forthcoming product developments that are relevant to festival audio.

Rüdiger Nürnberg: The trend to have the same powerful sound while using even smaller and lighter gear definitely provides sufficient freedom for sound design. Additionally, it would be nice if there would be a common standard for digital sound transmission. This would make it possible to combine products from different manufacturers. In this field it will be interesting to see which standards will be developed and will establish themselves.

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