The 2015 Lollapalooza festival gave mix engineer Chris Shepard the opportunity to field test one of the first Dangerous Music 2-Bus+ summing amplifiers, while recording Paul McCartney and Metallica in the American Mobile studio truck – his company specialising in mobile music recording and live mixing for video streaming.
Shepard and his American Mobile team mixed the live web stream of Lollapalooza for Springboard Productions and Red Bull TV. ‘The 2-Bus+ is my new secret weapon,’ he says.
The day before the Lollapalooza soundcheck, Shepard set up the 2-Bus+ and ran his favourite songs through it to get some ideas of what might work for sweetening the live audio mixes ‘on the fly’. By the end of the day he was confident with the unit in line and comfortable with the sonic imprint of the Paralimit and X-Former as the last thing in his audio chain. Scheduled to mix five bands a day for the live webcast, ‘I created a basic ‘starter setting’ for each band,’ he explains. ‘Controls felt very predictable and easy to use. I immediately felt like the 2-Bus+ was my safety net I could lean on a bit.
‘Opening night featured Paul McCartney and Saturday night featured Metallica. Both sounded great through the Dangerous 2-Bus+,’ he reports. ‘I really hit the Paralimit good on each set helping me hold the mixes together and pump up the volume. Even more than that, it feels good mixing ‘into’ the Para-limit, helping me dig up little nuances and subtle tones in the mix that give it colour.’
Shepard also used the X-Former processing feature on the 2-Bus+: ‘The transformer control really glues the mix together,’ he says. ‘It can be subtle or saturated like the output stage of a classic analogue mixing console. I plan on adding a Dangerous 2-Bus+ to three of the American Mobile rigs right away.’
After wrapping up Lollapalooza, Shepard is scheduled to mix the Best Of Firefly with mixer Steve Weeder for Springboard Productions, then heading to Washington D.C with the American Mobile crew for the Landmark Festival, and after that two weeks in Texas mixing Austin City Limits, a festival American Mobile has mixed the live music broadcast for since 2005.
More: www.dangerousmusic.com
