I'm finally getting around to writing up a demo I did with fellow LABster Jason Dermer last week in New Jersey at the East Brunswick Guitar Center, which is unlike any other Guitar Center I've ever been to. The people there actually know what they're doing, didn't try to sell me anything, and the head of the Pro Audio department (Rick Rivera) has real touring creds. To top it off, when I pulled out the ProRack and started setting it up, one of the sales guys stopped and said "APB Dynasonics? That's the shit!".
The event was a demo for
IK Multimedia, a company that makes a lot of cool plugins for emulation of everything from Moog synths to symphonies to bass rigs. They had a presentation with some hired in musicians, including T.M. Stevens of Parliament fame, all of whom were a pleasure to work with and listen to. The room was the back office area of the GC, and held about 100 people (many standing) plus room for the "stage" area. Here's a shot to give you an idea of what I was working with:
With all the performers in front of the mains (by only a few feet!) and the room having the acoustics of a warehouse, it was already looking interesting.
I took stereo sources from four computers controlled by the presenters, each of which had an external sound box of some kind, mostly Presonus. The computers took MIDI from four keyboards (two house left and two house right) and a Roland V-Drums kit (far house right) and did the actual playing of the notes. One of the computers also took a line from T.M.'s bass and ran cabinet/mic emulation on it and then mixed that down to me as well. I also had three vocal mics, three wireless headworn mics for the presenters to talk to the audience, and an iPod for walk-in. That brings total channel count to 16, plus I ran a recording mix off the dedicated out supplied for that purpose.
The ProRack made life easy off the bat with its stereo channels, each of which had phantom available to power my JPCs. I ended up doing basically nothing to those channels, but the 6 "vocal" channels took every ounce of control the board had available. It was nice to load up a rackmount board with 16 channels of stuff and have enough free to take care of any surprises that might crop up. The swept high pass on each channel was indispensable, plus the powerful EQ was put to good use. The artists were speaking through GC-supplied Sennheiser e835s, which did fine even though one of the artists spoke softly and was positioned directly in front of one of the mains. Unfortunately, the presenters were using (also GC supplied) cheap Shure wireless with cheap capsules that sounded like crap off the bat and dropped out like nobody's business. The EQ required to get the headworn mics to sound decent wasn't possible because it made them too susceptible to feedback, so the presenters sounded like they were talking through a $2 radio for the whole gig... a shame but it wasn't my wireless and there wasn't enough time to swap it out. As Jason said to me mid-gig: "I'd give anything for another band of swept EQ".
I actually did essentially zero mixing, as I'd come down with a cold over the weekend and my ears were shot. I managed to catch a shot of Jason hard at work (he always mixes from behind the console):
Aside from the issues with the wireless and the room being acoustically... interesting (especially at LF) the gig went well. The ProRack was, as I have come to expect it to be, a workhorse with handy features thrown in (or extra outputs, or extra inputs) where you least expect them but most need them. Some of the material played during the demo was simply breathtaking, and of course it was great to hear the performers jam out to the tiny audience. Everyone got very into it and there were nothing but compliments, so I walked out happy.
Here's a few shots from the show that I thought were cool, including one of Jason really working (that's his "if that mic drops out one more time I will end it" face).