Coldplay’s The Spheres World Tour finally arrived in Australia, playing to thousands at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium and Sydney’s Accor Stadium. As with many previous Coldplay tours, JPJ Audio supplied gear and crew.
Coldplay’s production team is tasked with balancing making the band sound good while meeting the 50% reduction in carbon emissions goal compared to their previous Head Full of Dreams Tour in 2016-2017. Sourcing the sound system via local vendors makes it possible to curb long-distance transport costs and emissions.
When the band last toured Australia, they utilized a d&b audiotechnik J Series but have since progressed to a GSL system. The setup is 16 x GSL8 mains per side, 16 x GSL8 side per side, 6 x flown SL sub per side, 16 x KSL8 270 per side, four field delays of 16 x KSL8, 16 x SL ground subs and Y7p and Y10p infill.
Ring delays were eight hangs of 8 x J line, four hangs of 6 x V line for Melbourne, and six hangs of 8 x V line in Sydney.
A whopping 292 x d&b speaker boxes, driven by 146 x D80, were set up for the show.
Daniel Green is Coldplay’s FOH engineer/mixer and co-producer, and, for this tour, Dan, a long-time DiGiCo user, upgraded to the Quantum 852.
“The SD7 is still a fantastic console, but the Quantum 852 takes live mixing to a new level”, commented Dan. “This console has new large higher res screens, huge workflow improvements with all of the macros and ergonomically to mix on it’s brilliant. The Quantum infrastructure of the console is very powerful, allowing me to supply many pre-mixed stems to broadcast trucks each with their own processing”.
For master bus processing, Dan uses Rupert Neve MBT & MBC and Chandler Curve Bender. Outboard Effects are Bricasti reverbs and his trusty TC2290. Waves Soungrid and Fourier Audio Transform Engine handle plugin processing.
“It has been fantastic to work again with the JPJ team again,” added Dan. “They always deliver the highest standard of work and equipment. The guys are easy to work alongside and bring a great atmosphere to the tour.”
JPJ Touring Crew: Boden Birkett, Ryan Fallis, Samuel Burtt, Trent Bishop.
Melbourne Ring Delays: Alex Jackson, Dylan Sgarbossa, Angus Edwards, Hugh Wakfer, Joshua Early, Lewis Webbe, Joseph Pearce.
Sydney Ring Delays: James Grant, Elyce Joannidies, Luke Bowen, Luke Murphy, Thomas Adams, Wayne Mulder, Mandy Ireland.
