2050 hardware, except for Fletcher, the
keyboardist, who uses stereo wedges. In
fact, even with the majority of the band on
IEMs, there are still d&b M2 wedges in each
position.
“This is only the second tour where
Dave’s gone to in-ears. Previous to that,
it’s always been wedges. We’ve kept ev-
erything as it was, but we’ve just added
in-ears. The wedges still give you some-
thing that in-ears won’t; they give you the
weight, and Martin only wears one in-ear,
so he needs the wedges as well,” explains
Thorogood.
In total, there are five stereo wedge
mixes and four mono wedge mixes, in
addition to the 10 IEM mixes (the five band
members plus four techs and Thorogood).
Lastly, for Eigner, the drummer, there is a
mix for the two d&b Q-Subs behind his
throne.
“To me, the Depeche live [sound] is
quite different from a Depeche album.
The live drums really drive this gig; it’s a
big part of it, and Dave really relies on the
drums,” says Thorogood. “As far as dialing in
what’s needed on stage, kick and snare, it’s
pretty much standard rock and roll, and it’s
at a reasonable level, too. It’s quite loud on
stage, but it’s a nice loud.”
BEYERDYNAMIC MICS ON DRUMS WITH D&B Q-SUBS
L-ACOUSTICS KS28 SUBS & D&B AUDIOTECHNIK M2 WEDGES
Beyer,] and he was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do
it!’ We emailed back and forth, like, ‘I
would put this on the snare. What do
you think?’ And he’s saying, ‘There’s this
new mic coming out. Let’s try this one,’”
recalls King.
During early tour rehearsals, there
were essentially two complete micro-
phone set ups – one with all the new
Beyer gear and the other with all the mics
they’d previously used.
“I threw the whole thing at Sarne
[Thorogood, monitor engineer,] at the
beginning and he was really cool and
went with it,” King continues. “You know,
when you get the call from the front of
house bloke saying, ‘I’m changing every-
thing on stage,’ it’s like, ‘Oh no.’ It could
be a bit rough. We decided to put all
the new mics up and if there were any
he didn’t like, we could go back to what
we had. It didn’t have to be 100 per cent
Beyerdynamic. But when we set them up
in rehearsals, we were really impressed, so
we didn’t change anything from there. It’s
an entirely Beyerdynamic mic package.”
Side stage is Thorogood, as he’s been for
20 years as Depeche Mode’s monitor en-
gineer. He’s also behind a new console, a
Midas Pro X, which replaced his previous
Midas XL8. “It gets up and goes every
day,” he says. “I use everything onboard. I
have one external [TC 3000] reverb, but
in reality, I could do everything onboard
now with that.”
With the Pro X, Thorogood is using
four Midas DL431 preamp modules with
96 available analog inputs. He has 120
inputs in all, including FX returns, and 24
of them are via MADI BNC feeding Pro
Tools and click tracks. Each band member
is on Ultimate Ears IEMs with Sennheiser
It’s been a hell of a career so far for the core
members of Depeche Mode – Gahan, Gore,
and Fletcher – who, in their fourth decade
as a band, are still playing some of the big-
gest shows of their career and staging one
of the best attended and most profitable
tours in the industry. It’s a testament to the
timelessness of their music.
And the crew that takes care of them,
ensuring their classic songs and tones are
faithfully replicated night after night, feel
that arenas may be the best place to wit-
ness them. Of course, it’s hard to beat the
sheer spectacle of 66,000 people in Lon-
don Stadium, for example, but as Thoro-
good says, “I think Depeche does some
of their best gigs in American arenas. It’s
about the crowd, because they’re almost
encased. Sonically, arenas are great be-
cause Dave hears the crowd, which is quite
important to him.”
And obviously, he and the band are
important to the crowd.
Michael Raine is the Senior Editor of
Professional Sound.
PROFESSIONAL SOUND • 37