Pairing Waves plug-ins and MultiRack SoundGrid with SSL’s Live mixing console on Jason Aldean’s Burn It Down tour, engineer Chris Stephens admits to having been drawn into a new way of working – first in the studio and now live.
‘I started with a couple of plug-ins on my old Venue Profile and have slowly expanded over the past four years,’ he says. ‘My transition into using Waves was slow, picking a plug-in here or there to solve a specific problem. Over time, I had changed almost everything in my rack to Waves products. Since switching from the integrated plug-in system of Avid Venue to the standalone system of MultiRack SoundGrid, I have been very impressed with how robust MultiRack SoundGrid is and how easy it is to use.’
Jason Aldean’s set-up comprises a five-piece rock band with nothing pre-recorded – two guitars, steel, bass and drums. ‘Waves’ Bass Rider helps me to level out the articulation of the more intricate bass parts, while keeping the low notes locked in with the kick,’ Stephens explains. ‘Maintaining the relationship between the bass and kick is vital with so little instrumentation. Bass Rider is the perfect tool for achieving a consistent bottom end, which is the foundation of the mix.
‘The C6 Multiband Compressor has become indispensable in my mix – it is the most versatile of the Waves products I use,’ he continues. ‘For Jason’s vocal, I use the low band to compress 250Hz and below when he is at the bottom of his register or talking between songs, and the high-mid band to take a little harshness off of the really high notes.
‘I am also using C6 on the bass with a dynamic EQ band, side-chained off the kick at 55Hz to clear room out of the bass for the transient of the kick drum to poke through. In addition I use the C6 on my LR matrix out to the PA. I don’t use it every day, but I will use it to clean up the low-mids in a very boomy arena or to soften the highs on a not-so-great festival PA system. I started using InPhase last year and it has completely changed the guitar sounds I am able to get. We are using two mics on the guitar cabinets, a dynamic and a ribbon, and those mics sound best at different distances from the cabinet. This creates a phase difference, which I am able to correct with InPhase. Being able to quickly take a measurement and align those mics is absolutely key. In a live setting where despite our efforts we will never be able to get the mics in the exact same place every day, this is a must-have tool for any source with multiple mics.’
The SSL Live is tied to the plug-is using a DiGiGrid MGO to go in and out of two Madi optical I/O ports on the console surface. ‘This configuration gives me 64 insert points at 96kHz between the SSL Live and Waves MultiRack SoundGrid,’ Stephens says. ‘Those plug-ins run on redundant Waves SoundGrid Extreme servers. The routing options in SSL Live are the most extensive of any console I have ever seen. My MGO box lives in the console case, while my switch and servers are in my processing rack, so the entire system connects with just one Cat6 cable.
‘We’ve just finished our first run of shows with SSL Live and I can’t say enough about the console and how incredibly excited I am with how we have integrated Waves plug-ins into the system,’ he adds.
