relied on his go-to Meyer Galileo Galaxy processors –
one at FOH and the other at the stage – for EQ, level,
and delay. “The drive system is all digital at 96 kHz
from the S6L to the amplifiers,” he shares. “This keeps
the whole system sounding as clean and accurate as
possible by eliminating the AD and DA conversions.”
Speaking of the S6L-32D at FOH, Gardner
notes he’s grown quite fond of the system of late.
“The console is really fantastic,” he says simply. “I’ve
been a big supporter of Avid consoles going back
to the original Digidesign D-Show and Profiles,
though they’ve really changed the game now with
this console running at 96 kHz. You can hear every
little fader move, EQ change, and dynamic proces-
sor because the resolution is so fine.”
Gardner was invited to take part in some ear-
ly training sessions in Toronto hosted by LS Media,
Avid’s Canadian distributor, around the system’s
launch in early 2016 and says he was immediately
impressed with its functionality and workflow.
“I decided to take it out on Arkells’ Morning
Report and Knocking at the Door tours in Canada in
2017, so I became really familiar with its set-up and
operation,” he adds. “Continuing on with it for the
Rally Cry Tour was an easy decision.”
Owing to the console’s feature set, Gardner
notes that he isn’t carrying any physical outboard
gear on this trek, instead relying solely on internal
plug-ins. “For me, gone are the days of carrying
around racks full of mic pres, compressors, line
levelers, and effects units,” he shares.
Lately, he’s been particularly fond of McDSP’s
Active EQ 400 on frontman Max Kerman’s vocals.
“When the vocal gets really loud, I can compress
specific frequencies based on a threshold, ratio,
and Q so that the vocal sounds smooth when
there’s all volumes of talking or singing going on
and keep it sitting nicely at the top of the mix,” he
reveals. “And going all the way back with Avid’s
other product lines, I’ve always loved the BF76
[compressor/limiter plug-in based on the UA 1176]
for things like bass guitar and snare drum.”
While Gardner has grown intimately familiar
with Arkells’ back catalogue over the past six years,
rayCalc [simulation software]. I did all of the venue
speaker designs ahead of time using information
from Wiki-gigs.com, which is my online database
of concert venues.”
While Halliwell had used ArrayProcessing in
the past for one-off dates, this was his first time
using it for a tour, and he really enjoyed the expe-
rience. “ArrayProcessing uses the digital processing
in the D80s to adjust the tone and level of every
speaker in the hang to optimize the sound reach-
ing the audience,” he explains. “This system uses
the venue design and speaker hang design infor-
mation from ArrayCalc to create settings in the R1
amplifier control software. We listened to a num-
ber of different settings and agreed that the AP
setting of ‘+5 Glory’ was the way to go. This gave us
the best results without the system ever sounding
‘over-processed.’”
He adds that ArrayProcessing is able to
reduce the tonal variation that can occur when a
curved array is firing into a multi-level venue.
To tune the system for each date, Halliwell
Avid Venue S6L-32D
console at FOH mix position
28 PROFESSIONAL SOUND