Three sell-out shows at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, marked both the homecoming and the recent conclusion of hip-hop legends Outkast. #ATLast was also the first concert appearance in Atlanta in more than a decade, and pulled 20,000-plus crowds who were served by a Meyer Sound Leo sound system – as specified by FOH engineer Darcy Khan, who mixed the shows on DiGiCo SD10 console.
‘The first time I’d mixed with Leo was earlier this summer at the Montreux Jazz Festival,’ he says. ‘It was astonishingly clear, with no phasing issues, and I could walk from the stage all the way to the back and hear a nice, even wall of sound. A few weeks later, I mixed on another Leo system at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal, where I experienced the system’s long-throw power. That sold me – I knew I wanted a Leo rig for Atlanta.’
Supplied by VER Tour Sound, the Atlanta system comprised main arrays of 14-each Leo-M and side arrays of eight-each Lyon linear line array loudspeakers. Three delay towers comprised eight Mica line array loudspeakers each, while 12 Mina loudspeakers provided front fill. Low-end was supplied by 12 flown and 18 groundstacked 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements. A Galileo Callisto loudspeaker management system with three Galileo Callisto 616 and three Galileo Callisto 616 AES array processors provided system drive and optimisation.
According to Khan, the linear characteristics of Leo helped him to maintain sonic consistency despite the extreme dynamics of Outkast’s sound: ‘Even if you spend all day tuning the PA, when the show starts, the crowd gets going, and you push it up to 110dB SPL, many PA systems start to change,’ he says. ‘So I’m constantly fighting the mix, and that’s frustrating. But with Leo, I always hear the same qualities in the mix, whether during a soft part or going full on. It’s always even, so I can just mix and not worry about the system.’
Khan also liked the musicality of the 1100-LFC loudspeakers: ‘I like to feel the low end, but I also want to hear the unique sound of the instruments, like the Roland TR-808 drum machine. With the 1100-LFC, I can hear that tonality all the way down to 30Hz or 40Hz.’
Representing VER on-site were Project Manager Kyle Shepherd and System Engineers Erik Rogers and Chad Fuller. Logistics were orchestrated by Ralph Mastrangelo and Chance Stahlhut.
The band used Shure UHF-R wireless microphone systems, with Antwan ‘Big Boi’ Patton on a Sennheiser SKM 5200 wireless microphone. Monitors were mixed on a DiGiCo SD5 digital console, with the band using Shure PSM 1000 IEM systems.
