Readying to resume its run, Peter Gabriel’s Back to Front tour will see Britannia Row Productions back in action with three SSL Live consoles taking care of its mixes – one at front of house, one for the band monitors and one for Peter Gabriel’s monitoring system.
‘Live sounds really good and makes mixing live audio very easy,’ says FOH engineer Ben Findlay. ‘You get lots of separation and clarity. The EQ is musical, never harsh, and the dynamics are transparent even when compressing a signal hard, as you would expect from an SSL console.
‘The mixes come together quickly when starting from scratch. Because the audio is very clearly defined, you have more options regarding relative levels, so elements of a mix that may normally be masked with another console are still clearly audible. This leads to accomplishing the often illusive third dimension to a mix that live engineers strive for – and that is a real sense of depth. The console is also extremely reliable with not so much as a flicker during the whole tour. I am now at the stage where I am sure I would miss Live if I had to revert to my previous system.’
The console is designed to cover a range of operational approaches as Back to Front demonstrates, with the three experienced engineers handling differing tasks.
‘Ben and I recorded a multitrack version of the Back to Front show during the US tour in 2012, so we had a ready reference to run through the Live console when it became available before official show rehearsals,’ says Richard Chappell, Peter Gabriel’s live show coordinator and personal monitor and studio engineer. ‘When we first worked with Live, we realised how very exciting and pioneering this console is.
‘The first part of the learning curve was the touchscreen that allowed each of us to configure the set-up the way we wanted to work. The needs of monitoring are, after all, different from FOH. For me, Live is the engineering equivalent of what a musical instrument is to a performer. I can now do what I do better with Live. Second, I’ve heard horror stories in the past about other new consoles going out and crashing or not working. With Live, we never lost a show.’
‘Live is a hybrid console that has a touchscreen but it’s also button operated; a real crossover between two ways of working,’ says monitor engineer Dee Miller. ‘For an engineer, it’s a very powerful tool and capable of doing a lot of things. What I’ve had to do is learn how to use the desk to mix the show my way, so Live is a tool for any particular job as opposed to bending a job around a different manufacturer’s tool. It’s got some great features on it and it’s very powerful. Live sounds great, the clarity is extremely good and I would just say that you can hear everything really, really well. From an engineering point of view, I made many performers happy with their monitor mixes using Live.’
See also:
Sound mixing for Peter Gabriel concert movie
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