Last year, audio engineer Anatole Day managed one show with Bliss n Eso before the tour was cancelled. Now he’s happily part way through an extensive nationwide tour.
“The band pretty much let me do what I do,” remarked Anatole. “I see it as big but well balanced with the vocals just on top. I like it to sit at around 103dB at FOH.”
Anatole is touring an Allen & Heath CTi1500 dLive console as it is very small and light yet very powerful and versatile. Anatole also does monitors from FOH on the dLive.
“I don’t have to do anything particularly major with this act,” he said. “Just make it sound as good as I can while maintaining a decent level.”
PA systems have all been inhouse and so far Anatole has used d&b audiotechnik (both Y and J series), L’Acoustics K2, Outline, Nexo STM and a dB technologies rig.
All microphones are Sennheiser:
Kick in – e901
Kick out – e602
Snare top, snare bottom, rack tom and floor tom – e904
Hats and overheads – 8050
Radio mics – 2000 series with e945 caps
Audience mics – e914
All DIs – radial passive DIs
The band uses a mix of IEMs and wedges, with the wedges whatever the venue has, but usually:
2 x pairs of floor monitors downstage
1 x set of side fills, either side of stage
1 x floor monitor for DJ
1 x sub for drummer
Wireless IEMs are three Sennheiser G3 and one G4 whilst wired IEMs are Shure PSM1000 HW.
“Doing monitors from FOH adds a whole new layer of demands and pressures,” commented Anatole. “They are a fairly easy band to deal with, so this is not too difficult to get right. You just have to bear in mind that if you don’t split certain channels to do a separate feed for FOH and monitors, then whatever you do to each channel will affect both FOH and monitors – sometimes that is okay, but sometimes that can cause issues.
“The most challenging thing would be having to tune in the monitors and the PA each day as they are always different and sometimes they can be fairly ordinary!”
