Night ” Celebrates 50th Anniversary In Manhattan DiGiCo & L-Acoustics

A side view of the L-Acoustics loudspeaker system at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan that provided sound reinforcement for artists on the main turntable stage as well as additional performances on a third area downstage left.

Firehouse Productions deploys system at Radio City Music Hall in support of "SNL
50:
The Homecoming Concert" headed by K2 arrays, KS28 subwoofers and more joined by four Quantum consoles.

The recent “SNL 50:
The Homecoming Concert” marking the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, was supported by a sound reinforcement system deployed by Kingston, NY-based Firehouse Productions that was headed by L-Acoustics loudspeakers and Di Gi Co  consoles.

As much known for its musical performances as for its comedy, SNL has been a stage for live music throughout its five decades. Artists returning to perform for the event included Bonnie Raitt, Cher, Dave Grohl, David Byrne, Jack White, Jelly Roll, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and Ms. Lauryn Hill. Appearances by SNL comedy alumni counted John Mulaney, Dave Chappelle, Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Robert De Niro, with the ensemble hosted by one-time cast member Jimmy Fallon, who performed The Blues Brothers hit, “Soul Man.”

“For my career and for that of everyone who worked on that show, we knew we were not going to be around for SNL’s 100th anniversary,” says Mark Dittmar, VP of sales for Firehouse Productions, which handled the live sound reinforcement for the three-hour event. “So it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on a show that has absolutely crazy amounts of music, and at the same time huge amounts of sketch comedy, musical comedy, and dialog.

Every note, every lyric, every word of every bit had to sound great and be totally intelligible to everyone in the house. And it was.”

Firehouse Productions brought in two each Di Gi Co  Quantum
338 consoles for monitors and Quantum7 consoles for front of house, abetted by a dozen SD-Racks. These managed a total of seven 56-channel splitters between house and broadcast sound.

Two Di Gi Co  Quantum7 supplied the FOH mixes while two Quantum
338 were used for monitors at Radio City Music Hall.

The event’s L-Acoustics loudspeaker system comprised two hangs of 14 K2 each, one hang of 16 Kara II for the center channel, two hangs of nine KS28 subwoofers each, twin stacks of three KS28 for ground subs, 16 Kiva for front-fills, and four ARCS II for out-fills. The system, designed using L-Acoustics Soundvision software and managed by LA Network Manager on a Milan-AVB network, accommodated a turntable stage that enabled one artist to perform as the next one was setting up, with interstitial comedy and sketch performances taking place on a third performance area downstage left.

The pairs of Quantum7 and Quantum
338 desks were split between each half of the turntable, with the third stage sharing their work surfaces. The Di Gi Co  consoles’ workflows gave the mixers – FOH engineers Jason Crystal, Jamie Pollock, and Dan Gerhart, with Mike Bove and César Benítez mixing monitors – what they needed to mix a range of music genres and performances on the fly.

“Di Gi Co  is the industry standard for a lot of performers, and the power of these desks is enormous,” Dittmar says. “The Quantum7 is unparalleled with the number of inputs and outputs it can handle. We had a total of seven 56-channel splitters feeding all of the I/O SD-Racks for this, so there was a huge amount of inputs and outputs that were being shared among these desks and at monitors, feeding over 40 in-ear mixes and 30 monitor wedge mixes, plus three sets of stereo side-fills.

It was a huge amount of equipment and it takes a very big desk to accomplish that. Our engineers who were mixing the show are all intimately familiar with the Di Gi Co  line, specifically the Quantum desks, and they’re very fast on them. That power is what allows them to work so fast.”

He also points to the contribution of the consoles’ onboard processing: “That’s what keeps us from having to patch in a lot of extra…