Frankenfurter Musik Messe 08 (pt2)

Tuesday 11/03/08

Up too early after a bad nights sleep, could have been the hassle from yesterday, could have been the sauna of a room or the pillow made out of concrete, but its not even the first day of Frankfurt and I feel dog tired already. Still breakfast makes a slight difference as does the on-time, queue free tram ride – even if we’re still not sure what ticket we’re supposed to have bought!

Today is finishing off the stand and setting up the TA-500t demo system outside. It is squally outside – sometimes sunny and dry, sometimes raining heavily but always very windy and cold. Given the size of everyone else’s PA (all Line Array Hangs) we decide to give them a chance and only fly four TA-500t per side. Then with a little bit of rearranging everyone else’s subs we get our TSW-218s stacked and wired up. All this is achieved in a relatively short period with the help of the ever cheerful Carsten Eichstädtof BLL-Veranstaltungstechnik (a German Aspect Rental company owner) Then we had to we had to wait for our slot for sound check so we could check the system through and tune it for the conditions.

Sound check threw up the odd “high impedance, high oxygen mix connections” – ie unconnected cables. These were probably explained by the conditions and the fact that the stage is full of cables for another seven PA systems as well as ours. Connections connected, using Danny’s years of experience the system was tweaked to ensure the subs were time-aligned to the speaker hangs and the band gains adjusted to achieve the perfect balance from each component set.

By now there are some happy and worried looking people around the PA Forum area. We are the happy looking people! Carsten is particularly please when we play a renowned German Techno track, which gives the TSW-218s something to work with. Pity we are limited in the Demonstrations to 99dB LEQ over each of our 20min slots.

Back to the stand to ensure that everything is packed away, all the product is set-up and labelled correctly, literature is out in the appropriate location and we are ready for the massed hoards in the morning. I am particularly proud of my flowing arrangement of NuQ product around what we’re calling “technology corner” – which is full of technology (Aspect Polyhorns and one of the new Dendritic horns from FlexArray) but is a display cabinet rather than a corner.

More delays have held up yet more members of the Turbo crew but eventually most of them make it to the stand to find most of the work already done – suspicions about how bad the delays really were remain.

Back to the hotel then back to our Italian restaurant where we get to discuss everyones travel disasters and the plan for the next few days. As ever when you put more than one member of Turbosound in the same room there are plenty of opinions on display at the table. We also get to watch Liverpool beat Milan at the San Siro in the Champions League – this makes our host, Leonardo happy as his team AS Roma were already through and become the only Italian team left in the competition. His partner Antonio, a Juve fan, feigns disinterest in the whole affair.

Still cold and windy, tram back to the hotel and another bad nights sleep.