On my ninth birthday my mom took a bunch of my pals and me to the Utica Coliseum to witness a race car event. The sound was deafening ... I hated it! Actually, I’ve felt the same way at loud bars and concert venues all my life; my wife and I were in Las Vegas last year with her sister and her husband and they wanted to check out a bass-heavy urban music club. It was horrifically, painfully, frighteningly loud. I left shortly after the down beat with Jerri, but my in-laws seemed to be having a great time.
I’m not sure how aggressive the sound levels get when you pack tens of thousands of fans together to watch 16 monster trucks prowl around the track, but conducting interviews with the drivers over the waves of sound can’t be easy, particularly if you’re working at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, where radio frequencies are at a premium.
Michael Ward, a sound engineer based in New Jersey, was asked to handle the audio work at the Monster Jam 2013 tour event held at the MetLife Stadium. Ward took the opportunity to take the Shure Axient wireless system for a test drive. “This was my first time using Axient at a live event, and a monster truck event was a perfect test of the system,” says Ward. “We needed RF coverage across the entire stadium, and the audio was being captured for broadcast on the Speed Channel as well. The wireless mics could be used for driver interviews wherever the truck wound up, plus there were giveaways to fans up in the stands. Basically, I mixed everything live on the fly, and, I have to say, the wireless performance was flawless.”
More information on the Axient and all other company products can be found on the Shure website, www.shure.com.
