Dean Lewis’ The Epilogue World Tour is touring the world after it started in Australia late last year.
Five days of rehearsals were helpful for FOH Sound Engineer Edd Derham, who utilised a pair of d&b audiotechnik Y7P plus B6-SUBs at the front-of-house position. With an additional band member for this tour, Edd and monitor engineer Greg Coates needed to adjust their previous show files. The rehearsals gave them a welcomed chance to start mixes afresh.
The first tour Derham did with Lewis was as a guitar tech, so by the time he progressed to Sound Engineer, he was very familiar with the music.
“I knew going in he wasn’t just a straight-up singer/ songwriter; it’s a bit rockier with a full band and plenty of low end,” he commented.
Derham utilised a d&b audiotechnik KSL PA system supplied by JPJ Audio and remarked that you can tune it to be relatively smooth in the top end, allowing the mix to be bright and clear whilst avoiding harshness.
“A big plus of KSL is its great low-mid power out of the hangs, despite it being a slightly smaller box, so your snares, toms, etc, are nice and powerful,” he added. “It’s great for impact alongside even room coverage.”
Derham chose an Allen & Heath dLive S5000 as his control surface, with a Neve 5045 PSE as his only piece of outboard. Onstage was a DM64 MixRack (which features 64 mic preamps, 32 line outputs, and a powerful 128-channel 96kHz FPGA processor) along with a DX168 for increased IO. A Dante card in the surface was utilised for multitrack recording and virtual playback.
A second DX168 in the FOH rack was to provide additional IO for his Neve 5045, B-Stage inputs, and outputs for LX IEMs and timecode.
The B-stage ended up being in different locations, depending on the venue. In some shows, Lewis was out by front-of-house, and sometimes, he was on a raised balcony closer to the stage.
“The main difficulty of the B-stage is the risk of feedback through Dean’s vocal mic,” remarked Derham. “Being on a riser in the crowd puts him into the coverage of the long throw boxes. The dLive’s built-in Source Expander combined with the 5045 helps combat that.
“The front-of-house expander lets us run some analog backups, as nearly everything’s on wireless up there. We had a few analog lines running just in case of dropouts.”
The band runs a silent stage with no amps, so microphones are only required for drums and vocals; all other inputs are via DI. Derham uses Roland drum triggers on the drum shells to sidechain gates, helping to reduce stage bleed.
Derham favours Allen & Heath mainly because most of his processing needs can be met solely within the console.
“There’s a lot of analogue emulation and tools that you’d have to add external plugins or hardware outboard to access on other consoles. Having it all built-in means you don’t need to carry extra pieces, there are fewer things to go wrong in the chain, and there are no extra computers or servers to crash.”
Changing the surface size without altering the show file is also advantageous. Derham has had to utilise different surface sizes depending on availability regularly, and no conversion or altering of his file is needed. He can fly into festivals completely self-contained by utilising flyable versions of the mixracks, alongside a C1500 surface. As this setup utilises a MADI split for monitors, he can avoid using a house analog split and patch everything directly, reducing the chances of a miss-patch.
Derham uses analog compressor emulations when mixing the show, like the dbx 160. A Transient Designer gets used on the kick drum to reduce sustain in the larger rooms. The new dLive V2 creative FX and reverbs are mainly used on Lewis’ vocal.
“I don’t think I do anything out of the ordinary for Dean’s vocal, but I do use a lot of Dynamic EQ all over the mix,” added Derham. “I compress him in stages to keep his vocal upfront alongside dynamic EQ and multiband to keep it warm without anything sticking out, making it as smooth as possible.”
Lewis recently moved to the Telefunken M80 capsule on a Shure Axient wireless system after touring for many years with the hardwired version of the M80. The decision was made to move to wireless so Lewis had more freedom to move onstage, and staying with the same capsule made Lewis’ transition more effortless in the IEMs.
Monitors
Monitor Engineer Greg Coates began his career by working in local venues in Birmingham, UK, and soon after began touring. Since then, it’s just rolled from there as he has built relationships with management, production and tour managers.
“It was an old tour manager friend who had joined the Dean Lewis camp and brought me on board,” said Coates. “At the time, I didn’t realise he had such a huge following worldwide. He’s a brilliant performer and does captivate an audience.”
That was two and a half years, and since then, Coates’s time with Lewis has ended up almost as one long tour.
“We’ve been to North America four or five times, and this will be our third or fourth time in Australia and New Zealand via Asia, Europe, and the UK,” he commented. “I joined the tour part way through a campaign and continued into my second cycle. Starting in Australia, the new album and my third campaign have been launched, and they will run until late next year. Each cycle does seem to run into the next. It’s been quite a relentless schedule.”
Coates ran a DiGiCo Quantum 335, saying he has an unorthodox way of getting inputs to front of house and monitors. With Derham out front with an Allen & Heath dLive and a DiGiCo for him, Coates had previously used a DiGiCo SD rack, and of course, front of house had the associated Allen & Heath rack.
“We were regularly moving between packages in different territories, or there’d be fly-in shows where we might carry consoles but rely on house line system and splits,” elaborated Coates. “We were getting somewhat tired of coming across splits where half of it might not work, or there was a considerable excess of copper that we didn’t necessarily need to run through. Derham and I put our heads together and decided that what we ought to do was some sort of digital split.
“Since the D-Live must have its own rack to operate, we tour the Allen & Heath rack with a superMADI Card, and I take a MADI stream from that rack into the DiGiCo. Now, the Allen & Heath rack handles all inputs and outputs, eliminating the need for an analog split. This way, we eliminate some variables, and it’s worked very well for us thus far.”
Historically, Coates always used a DiGiCo SD12, but the channel count significantly expanded on this run. A new member in the band, a B-stage, and various other additional inputs all accounted for more than 80 inputs from the stage.
“With all of my returns and various other bits of additional routing and channels I need at monitors, that’s taken me over the channel count of the SD12, which is why we’ve now turned to the Quantum because it will do 128 inputs, and that will now cover the needs of this show as it expands,” added Coates.
Coates says he favours the Mustard Processing when discussing the Quantum, adding that the gates and compressors are fantastic. The Nodal processing also gives him new mix options; for instance, the drummer often doesn’t want to hear as much processing as Coates might do on the drums, so it allows Coates to pick off a point in the signal chain for him that might be before any dynamics.
“I can send pre-gate and compression so he hears an uncompressed version of those close mics on his kit, and I can then give all the rest of the band the fully processed channel from a pick-off point further down the signal chain,” he explained. “It allows me to give the different band members slightly different processing to other members without duplicating channels and processing them separately.”
Coates had no outboard gear, as the Quantum’s Mustard Processing and Spice Rack allowed him to do everything required within the console.
All on-stage use In Ear Monitors, ten ways of Shure PSM1000, and a mix of IEMs across the performers.
Coates remarks that right from the first rehearsals, he gave them a mix that he would like to listen to. There were some tweaks for individual taste, and that’s where it’s remained.
“I’m pretty big on imaging, effects and creating spaces with reverbs in my mixes. I find dry and narrow mixes unpleasant to listen to. I like width, creating spaces, and replicating the stereo quality of how we naturally hear things.”
Show images: Tim Lambert
This article originally appeared in the January issue of Lighting & Sound International magazine.
