22 <strong>FOH</strong> Interview What about drums? Well, we do individual cymbal miking, so there are six total inputs for that. There is a ride and five overheads. Now because they are so spread out we wanted to do close miking with Tommy because of the extreme volume of the drum monitor. Snare top is an AT5400, snare bottom is an AT4050 and there’s an AT 2500 in the kick drum. There is a gong drum that has an AT2500 underneath and then the toms are double mics. I have ATM25s on top and on bottom of each tom and that gives them a great deal of depth. So, what do you have as far as total inputs? I haven’t counted really. Let's see… we've got, well, the 2500s or 2 inputs of It’s almost like an undisciplined mix — everything overlaps. This is not a case of neatly placing bandwidth like your guitar has this range and vocal has this range. — Andy Meyer kick, that’s four, snare top five, snare bottom six, hat seven, then there are 9 tom input’s, overheads, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, cowbell 23, perc trigger-24, 808-25. All right, so there are 25 inputs there. Have you ever tried the 2500 on guitar? Oh, yeah. That’s what I used on Justin’s tour on the guitars. I did a 2500 on each NOVEMBER 2008 www.fohonline.com guy, no EQ, just turned it up, which worked out fabulously. Yeah, turn it on and go. How do you have to deal with this kind of low end? Well, if the downbeat with the pyro concussion is exact, which doesn’t happen often, it can cause damage. We were blowing up 18s earlier in the tour and not being able to figure out why and… I knew the concussion was moving the mix a bit. You know, I was watching some of the inputs hitting pretty hard, but I was listening back to a show a few days ago when one of those hits happened, and man I will tell you what, it moved the drivers in my headphones, it hit perfectly on the downbeat — everything aligned, which is hard to do man. So, what are we missing? We are using new Powersoft digital amplifiers on the sub-bass. This is the first tour I have heard them on. They are a single-space amplifier that produces 7,700 watts at 2 ohms per channel with built-in DSP. It’s a very powerful amplifier. Oh, so does that cut down four or five racks? Oh, it cut down a couple of amp racks, yeah. Because we’ve got three in one rack and four in another — that’s four spaces and three spaces, that would have been two full amp racks. We were talking about stage volume. What the hell are the side fills that were flying? Oh, those are prism blue boxes. They are all prism boxes. So, there are four a side in the air and a sub on the ground and we don’t always do that. In sheds, it is just one sub and two tops on the ground. The reason is the sight-line issue because of the arena show, so we flew them up in the air and you need more when they go up in the air really. I have seen so many more people over the years going in-ear that I am not seeing the kind of stage volumes I used to. Well, you know what? That would be great. You know these guys have just done it so long and it is natural. It is so natural to them, I guess, to have that kind of wall surrounding them and it works. Have you been on the Venue system for a while? Well, I tried the Yamaha for a while, the PM5D. My trick other than the Big Ben Word Clock on it was the Waves slot card for the console. So, I put a Waves card in and I came ADAT Optical out into an Apogee mini-DAC, which is a D/A converter and so it basically bypasses the whole deal. It goes optical right out into the Apogee and the Apogee did my conversion, my D/A, plus the Wave slot card also has an L1+ ultramaximizer, I put right on the main mix. It was pretty rocking actually. That console sounded pretty damn good like that. The Venue, however, is a much better sounding console right out of the gate, and the snapshot automation is amazing. It is my console of choice. With the stage so loud, what is the best way you work with the monitor mixer? It’s imperative that you have a good relationship and you are on the same page with everything. We are getting through it and making it happen. Every little thing that changes on the deck sonically alters what I get. It’s all about making it work no matter what. Exactly, results only. That’s the game, man. Get a great result.
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