Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Sarah Benzuly

You may have seen them at your local theater, but the men in blue are taking their production on the road with their How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.1. The main performers in the production, the “Blue Men,” are silent characters that use a variety of unusual materials to create a wonderful musical soundscape; the production is supported by a full live band, with gear provided by audio rental company Audio Analysts.

Handling front-of-house duties is Ross Humphrey, with support from Audio Analysts' Chris Hoff (crew chief and system engineer), monitor engineer Matt Fitzgerald, and Rick Procopio and Brian Post, Audio Analysts' P.A. system techs. According to Hoff, “There are a lot of unusual instruments being used, including several made of PVC material, so there are some gain-before-feedback issues that you don't normally see with conventional instruments. With the [JBL] VerTec line arrays, we have good rear rejection and don't have a lot of SPL coming off the back of the boxes, so gain before feedback is not so much of a problem.” The system is powered by Crown I-Tech amps.

“The arenas that we play range in size from ‘A’ market to ‘B’ market venues, so flexibility and scalability of the system is important,” Hoff adds. “Sometimes we don't have the trim height that we have in other arenas, but with VerTec we can easily scale the system down with good results. We are using JBL's new VerTec Version 4 DSP presets, which give us even more flexibility depending on the size of the room and the array. Considering the style of the music and the way the mix is approached, this has proven to be a very effective tool.”

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