starting to feel like an Apollo 13-style disaster.
Dealing with the explosion would be one
thing, but getting the ship home would be
quite another. I can tell you now, with some
serious sound-guy-to-sound-guy respect that
our Mike, some fella with a funny accent from
up north, astronauted the shit outta this one.
Square Peg, Round Hole
Mike employs an SSL 550 at monitors with three
ML 32.32 analog stage boxes. After a lightning
fast process of elimination aided by our monitor
tech, Adam Field, it was determined that the loss
of signal and subsequent noise was localized to
the first of Mike’s stage boxes.
This would fit nicely into the timeline as
the point that I realized I was missing any
channel within our first 32 that required phan-
tom power. Things were adding up. Phantom
power was being supplied by monitors and
the outputs of the first SSL stage box were
feeding the band’s in-ears.
Meanwhile, up above the heads of the mul-
tiple techs and engineers now troubleshooting
below him, Shawn was proving just what a pro
he really is. Now stood on a band-less stage,
armed solely with an acoustic guitar, his in-ear
monitors out and dangling pensively from his
shoulders, Shawn led the audience in an acous-
tic rendition of the halted song. Instinctively
inspiring confidence in everyone watching that
the problem would be rectified quickly, Shawn
put his well-earned trust in Mike and Adam,
who were not about to let him down.
As I punched in phantom on the missing
channels, the boys on the stage end simulta-
neously re-patched outputs to the next stage
box. With no gain control over the broken box,
Mike managed to get the ship home. On fire.
Backwards. With his eyes closed.
We all learned something from that failure.
We implemented a back-up plan so that I
can send my mix to some easily-deployable
wedges in the event that anything similar
happens again.
And it did.
MONITOR ENGINEER MIKE FLAHERTY
ROGERS CENTRE IN TORONTO SET UP
FOR SHAWN MENDES WITH CLAIR PA
Vancouver. Show 2. North American Leg.
That’s right, show number two. This time, my
end of the snake. The fourth song in the set
and my Avid S6L begins to sporadically air
painful digital noise through the system –
thankfully intermittent enough that we didn’t
have to stop the show, but trust me. It sucked.
It took a long time to locate a fix after this
incident as we couldn’t recreate the problem
until it happened again a month or two later.
The solution turned out to be a very minor
update to Waves that solved an issue with one
specific plug-in I was using. Go figure.
It Will Make You Powerful, but It Will Also
Make You Weak
This was quite clearly not the start of the tour
any of us had hoped for. The problems we
were experiencing felt infuriatingly out of our
control. I found myself praying that things
would settle back in before we brandished our
Achilles heel for a third time.
As much as I quite like the notion of
“sound engineer” being interchangeable with
“fearsome Greek warrior,” that legend didn’t
work out so well for old Achilles, when the
heavily discounted plug-in
“arrow” buried itself just
above his ankle. Bummer.
(Or, as he would say,
βάλλ› εἰς κόρακας.)
Naturally, the end of
the European leg saw our
longtime head of security,
Jake, tear his Achilles ten-
don while lifting a suitcase
up some steps. Tour over.
Sometimes no matter what
you do, you just can’t fore-
see every single problem.
You definitely can’t let the
fear of failure dictate your equipment choices,
or the way you mix your show.
(Thankfully, Jake rejoined us midway
through the U.S. run and let me tell you, he
ain’t afraid of no suitcases.)
It would be easy to bury our heads in the
sand and play the blame game for both of
our problems. In my case, a Waves issue – a
company who I believe have unfairly become
the whipping boy for half of our industry.
Ninety-nine per cent of the problems I’ve had
with Waves have been user-driven screw-ups:
an audio vendor implementing the software
and/or server incorrectly, a flawed installation
on the part of the user, etc. The bottom line is,
Shawn and the band have never been happier
with their in-ears. Anytime I have heard the
mix through the SSL, it sounds outstanding.
I also truly believe I have the best tools at my
disposal with the S6L. While the problems on
both ends of the snake were due to equip-
ment failure and (thankfully) not the operators,
I can’t help but feel that the pursuit of progress
and a better-sounding show was an adequate
price to pay. We didn’t put a man on the moon
by being conservative with plug-ins and
preamps.
There Are No Pacts Between Lions & Men
Our prayers were answered swiftly after the
second show. Now armed with several back-
up plans and a renewed respect for our equip-
ment, we began to put the problems behind
us. We got incredibly lucky that out of both
issues, we never ended up on the receiving
end of terrible reviews or scolding press – a
fact largely attributed to quick action taken by
a great crew.
A look back over the past few years
highlights the media’s growing lust to jump
on an audio issue faster than a fly on shit and
PROFESSIONAL SOUND 31