Denver Summit of the Eight
Cover Story for Pro Sound New

When the leaders of eight of the world's most powerful nations gather for a summit, the stakes are high indeed. With the whole world watching, sound quality and technical precision are paramount. This year's "Summit of the Eight" took place in no less than 16 venues in Denver, including a huge media center for journalists from all over the world, a library room seating ten heads of state, plus a 58-minute gala musical presentation.

With severely limited rehearsal time and maximum security everywhere, being in charge of providing the sound was sure to present a cluster of challenges.

The summit, formerly known as the G-7, is the annual meeting of the presidents and prime ministers of United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. This year, Russia's Boris Yeltsin and representatives of the European Union were invited to take part as well. The historic event was under intense international scrutiny. But Richter Scale Productions of Denver, and Burns Audio of Los Angeles were up to the task for this three-day event, which their audio crews came to call "The Apogee Summit."Richter Scale had worked previously with members of the summit team during the 1992 and 1996 U.S. presidential election campaigns, as well as on the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay-a marathon 84-day, two stage tour that leap-frogged 15,000 miles across the country. Richter Scale provided two sound systems, a lighting rig and the main stage for the tour. Burns Audio has provided sound design and equipment for more than a dozen Grammy Awards shows over the past 25 years, and more than a half dozen consecutive Academy Awards shows.

Bruce Burns personally designed the system for the "Saturday Night at Summit" gala at Denver's Western Events Center, a 5000-seat arena primarily used for rodeos, horse shows and cattle shows. Appropriately enough, both President Bill Clinton and Bitish Prime Minister Tony Blair and wore denim to the show, while Prime Minister Hashimoto of Japan wore cowboy boots. Burns Audio hired Harold Richter's company to assist in the design phase and to provide additional equipment and staff for the musical variety show. Burns also brought in veteran stage supervisor Bill Daly from Hawaii, to handle the complex set changes-15 in all. Daly heroically reduced the changeover time from an average of ten minutes during the last run-through to the nearly instantaneous schedule required by the show. In addition to equipment and personnel support for the gala, Richter provided sound reinforcement, lighting and video support at the nearby Colorado Convention Center. The Center featured a large press briefing theatre and varying sized briefing rooms serving 3,500 credentialed international media. For the close of the summit, Richter provided a small but critical system for the world leaders' final communiqué at the Denver Public Library.

Nearly $1 million worth of gear was used for the "Saturday Night at the Summit" show; more than $750,000 worth was in use for the summit's press, delegations and communiqué facilities. As you can no doubt imagine, there were hundreds of points and plans that required discussion, "but there was no discussion about what speakers we would use," said Harold Richter. "Bruce has long felt that Apogee is the most musical system that you can use for a concert event, and I agreed that Apogee was the only logical choice, not just for the concert but for the entire summit. "Burns and Richter credited their insistence on using Apogee throughout the multiple venues as an important element in the success of the event. "I personally think the Apogee AE-5 is the best speaker made. With Apogee used everywhere, I went into this with full confidence," Burns remarked. "After experiencing the way Apogee products have performed for us in the past," added Harold Richter, "why would we use anything else?"

"Saturday Night at Summit" featured performances by 16 acts, including Lyle Lovett, Crystal Gayle, Kool & The Gang, Michael Bolton, Amy Grant, Ronnie Spector and Chuck Berry, whose slightly out-of-tune but spirited performance had President Clinton tapping his hand on his armchair with the beat. The concert used eight Apogee 3X3's per side for proscenium clusters, with four downfill AE-5's and four AE-12 subwoofers per side. Three AE-5's formed the center cluster, with the center speaker focused directly at President and Mrs. Clinton. Five additional AE-5's were used for downfill monitors from the front truss, and four AE-2s were placed across the front of the stage for front fill. The left and right stereo delay clusters each utilized three 3X3's and three AE-5's. Phil Allen, general manager for Richter Scale, expertly handled the five consoles (160 inputs) required for the FOH mix for "Saturday Night at the Summit." Allen noted that Apogee's ancillary products made life easier for his assistant Michael Cousins and their crew. "With Apogee's rigging hardware and MARS frames, we were able to hang four very large speaker clusters in just a short time, and we actually wound up waiting for the riggers, which is usually not the case."

Burns praised Ken DeLoria, president of Apogee Sound, Inc. for tuning the room with Apogee's CORREQT system. Sue Kennedy, director of marketing for Richter Scale added "and for designing one hell of a speaker." CORREQT, which was also used on Burns' Grammy and Academy Awards shows, is based on using a high precision dual-channel FFT analyzer from Hewlett Packard and a special Apogee-designed routing switch. Measurements are taken with B&K 4007 mics, and compensations are made using parametric equalizers. DeLoria tuned the "Saturday Night at Summit" system three days before the show, dashed off to Ohio to use CORREQT with a new all-Apogee loudspeaker system at a new installation for the Cincinnati Pops Symphony, then returned to Denver to tweak its concert system during the performances. DeLoria left immediately after the show for Japan, where Apogee's digitally-controlled amplifiers and new AmpNET '98 control software are going into a series of large installations.

The next day, the entertainment over and the business of the summit coming to a head, President Clinton and the rest of the leaders held afternoon press conferences with the international media at the Colorado Convention Center. The International Briefing Theatre, where Clinton held his press conference, was equipped with Apogee 3X3 and AE-5 clusters and AE-2's for front fill behind the 100' long, 6' high press riser. The delegations' briefing rooms were equipped with AE-5's and Apogee floor monitors at the podium for media Q&A. "We were very cognizant of the historic nature of the event, and were careful about the equipment we used at each venue," said Kennedy. "We had the opportunity to use other speaker systems, but we didn't because of our experience with Apogee." Kennedy noted that Richter Scale did an A/B comparison with Apogee and other leading manufacturers two years ago, "and for what we do it wasn't even close. The key to Apogee has been flexibility, because we can provide wonderful sound for events for whom both musicality and articulation are critical-when neither can be sacrificed. We went out of our way to make this an all-Apogee summit, because every one of these events had to be absolutely perfect. The entire world was watching."