Fans recently flocked to cities across North America and Europe for a chance to see Beyoncé live during the Renaissance Tour: a 56-stop run to support her latest GRAMMY® Award-winning album. Working with such a high-caliber artist, Renaissance Tour Monitor Engineer James Berry has high expectations for his sound setup—one that would need to impress not only for the live shows, but also for the recently released Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.
Knowing this, Berry turned to DPA Microphones for a number of versatile solutions that would hold up rain or shine, including the new 2017 Shotgun Microphone. “We did some beta testing with the 2017 and it ended up being a great crowd mic,” Berry explains. “The clarity and range of it was so full; we were able to cover more area with no distortion through the PA. I didn’t get any of that high-end distortion you hear with other shotguns. You can really ride it without getting any of that crunchiness you usually experience when the audience gets loud. I also didn’t have to high pass this shotgun as much as I do with others, which is rare.”
The 2017s were especially helpful for the live show recordings done at the Houston, Texas stops for the film. “We flew twelve 2017s from the ceilings of the catwalk to capture the upper levels of the stadium,” Berry explains. “The small size of the microphones really helped to hide it within the camera platforms and front of house decks.”
