ROB NEVALAINEN DAKOTA PONCILIUS CHRIS BRUNTON
NEVALAINEN ’ S MIXING SUITE ANCHORED AROUND THE AVID VENUE S6L AND NEUMANN KH120 STUDIO MONITORS
409 . Keyboards , acoustic guitars , and all other inputs were run through Radial JDIs . In terms of monitors themselves , all of the performers wore Shure PSM 1000 in-ears , with the lone stage box being a d & b Y-Sub for the drummer . For wireless transmission , Poncilius used RF Venue CP Beam antennas .
With Poncilius on monitors and overseeing the stage , Nevalainen handled the front of house mix , which in this case , could be more accurately described as a “ somewhere in the house ” mix , as the shows were mixed from an edit suite he had built in an unused office . “ I mixed front of house and did the broadcast two-mix from that , and we multitracked it to Pro Tools , where we had a couple redundant sessions going . And so , I was in a room that was about 150 feet away from the stage , with about a 60-inch monitor . It allowed me to really hear what the final two-mix was gonna sound like without hearing the noise pollution from being close to the stage ,” he explains .
In terms of the FOH suite itself , Nevalainen describes the setup , which is more or less his
dream rig . “ The edit suite is built around an Avid Venue S6L system , for a couple of reasons ; I ’ m very familiar with it , it ’ s my console of choice , it integrates with Pro Tools very easily , so doing any archiving is easy , and any multitracking . As well , I had some Neumann KH120 reference monitors , which I think are quite true , quite honest . And outside of that , I try my best to do as much mixing as possible insidethe-box , so most of what I used was onboard dynamics and effects . I ’ m a big fan of McDSP processing , so I use McDSP plug-ins , and then Dakota chose the microphones .”
He mentions , as well , that the suite is treated with Primacoustic Broadway panels . “ The room is pretty accurate , it ’ s not super dry and gives you a pretty live representation of what ’ s happening … I like feeling the sound in the room , which is another reason why I built the edit suite .”
Within the stage space , however , there was surprisingly little need for any sort of acoustic treatment , as it turned out that the drape used to create the black box was quite effective as a passive absorber . “ We did actually treat one wall with three-quarter-inch soundproofing , basically 30 feet long floor to ceiling , but to be honest , the effect that had was quite minimal ; the biggest effect was the fact that the thick drapes ate a lot of the reflections ,” says Nevalainen .
Now of course , when you ’ re dealing with audio as well as a myriad of cameras shooting a show , synchronization becomes a major consideration for keeping things running smoothly .
“ Anything that we ’ re doing with cameras , we had to do sync and timecode , and on the recording side of things that was a bit of a learning experience for us ; figuring out how to not only have a Pro Tools rig chase timecode , but to have redundant Pro Tools rigs chase timecode was a bit of a hurdle we had to work out pretty quickly ,” Poncilius explains . “ And we were able to do that using [ Avid ] Sync I / Os , which are pretty old technology at this point . What we would do is , we would have LTC coming from the camera with timecode , and it would convert to MIDI timecode , which I would send to a MIDI splitter , which would split into two MIDI interfaces to two separate Pro Tools rigs .
“ We could ’ ve had shared I / O for the system , but to keep things as redundant as possible , we actually put a new analog split in between the two I / Os . So , if anything in my system crashed , his recording would still go ; if anything in [ Rob ’ s ] system crashed , my recording would still go . The other thing with doing these broadcasts is that you ’ re trying to capture a live performance . You don ’ t want to have to be like ‘ Oh , hold on guys , Pro Tools crapped out !’”
This show , as well as the other streams produced by Gearforce , were hosted and streamed on a platform co-created by Nevalainen called Beatnik , which can be found at Beatnik . vhx . tv . Ultimately , the show was a success for everyone involved , with Arden ’ s camp especially being grateful to put on as close to a full show as possible . “ We obviously pre-taped it and showed it later , but most of the audience thought it was live , thought it was at an actual venue , and the sound was phenomenal ,” says
28 PROFESSIONAL SOUND