From college students posting YouTube videos of cover songs, Australian pop rock band 5 Seconds of Summer have achieved international success. Over the past year they have toured the UK, US and Australia, with John Delf on a Soundcraft Vi4 at FOH and Ben Booker on a Allen & Heath iLive system for monitors.

‘We’ve done more than 110 shows with One Direction interspersed with headlining shows and played in front of a combined audience of over one million people – not bad for a band that at the time hadn’t even had a single out yet,’ Delf says. ‘Most of the venues have been arenas from 10,000 to 20,000 capacity, although we did a couple of shows that were 25,000 to 30,000, and a few 1,000 to 3,000-seat theatres. Through it all the Vi4 has been rock solid.

‘For the first three songs of the set it’s almost impossible to hear the music because the fans’ screams are in the region of 115-120dB, which is quite a lot louder than the usual 104-105 dB gig level,’ he adds. ‘This also batters your ears and they take a little time to recover so it’s not until around song four that can you start to really get an idea as to what is going on.’

His attention remains on the band and the desk, however: ‘I have all my main important channels on layer one of the desk, so all the drums, bass, guitars and vocals, then layer two is just for backing tracks and effects returns that usually look after themselves. I use the VCAs a lot and have masters for all sections of the band and an all master for the whole band less vocals. It’s with this all VCA that I ride the dynamics of the band. I also have an effects VCA and a delay return VCA so I can control these levels and mutes without going on to layer two.’

He notes that one of the main reasons he chose the Vi4 is the Soundcraft Realtime Rack library of plug-ins developed with Universal Audio and compatible with all Soundcraft Vi Series digital consoles: ‘The fact that you can now use all the Universal Audio plug-ins in the live environment is so exciting. I own Edge Recording Studios in Cheshire UK and we have a UAD2 card installed and the Universal Audio plug-ins sound amazing in the studio, so to be able to apply those to live sound is very cool.

‘Soundcraft also provided us with the touchscreen to control all these plug-ins and that makes it so much cooler to use and also looks pretty damn impressive,’ he continues. ‘When I first started using them the effect was quite subtle but one day on tour one of my cables went missing and I thought I couldn’t use it for the show and that’s when I realised how much I missed it and how big a difference it really made. We found the cable in the end and it was all systems go. Not sure what I’d do without it now to be honest.’

Having used a Soundcraft Vi6 on a previous tour with the band Plan B, Delf chose the Vi4 primarily for its sound quality: ‘I love the way it sounds and it was my first choice for 5 Seconds of Summer,’ he confirms. ‘This band has a much smaller channel count than the Plan B tour so I was able to fit perfectly on the Vi4, so why not? It sounds amazing, has great preamps, has built-in dbx compressors and Lexicon effects, plus the addition of the Realtime Rack UAD card. Why wouldn’t anyone choose one?’

So far, Delf is more than satisfied: ‘I have loved using the desk and all of its features,’ he says. ‘It’s so easy to get round and everything you need is there in front of you. We let our support act use the desk too and their engineer had never seen one before the tour and by show two he was all over it. It’s very easy to use, sounds amazing and is so quick to learn. I couldn’t ask for more.’

Monitoring

Comprising an iDR-48 MixRack and rackmount iLive-R72 control surface, the monitor system was specified by Ben Booker, a long time iLive user. He is providing mixes for eight sets of in-ear monitors – four for the band, two for crew, one for himself and a matrix spare – as well as a drum sub mix. ‘Crowd noise is a big problem in this gig,” Booker reiterates. ‘Imagine 3,000 14-17 year old girls screaming at full volume. To combat this I have 4 Dyn EQs in use on the 4 vocals to add a wide 2.5k boost to the vocals when they sing on the mics. It works really well.’

Booker is using the iLive MixPad iPad app during soundcheck to walk around the stage and adjust mixes in place. He is also multitracking the show every night using a Dante networking card in the MixRack’s B slot. ‘This is great for virtual sound check and for future use if the band require live show recordings - it is a very neat and quick recording solution,’ he says. ‘It’s a very active show and the R72 gives me all the channels at my finger tips really quickly.’