Starting life as a low-budget underground TV show on SBS, RocKwiz has become a cultural icon of Aussie TV and a successful touring act.
2024 saw RocKwiz celebrate 20 years by undertaking its most extensive tour. Dubbed Never Mind The Buzzers, Here’s RocKwiz Live!, the tour comprised 39 gigs over two months.
FOH Engineer Richie Robinson has worked sporadically for the RocKwiz team for many years, starting when the program was recorded in Melbourne’s Gershwin Room, where he was often the system tech for JPJ Audio. Fast forward to just before Covid, and he has been mixing the live show ever since.
“Since last year’s RocKwiz salutes Mushroom tour, there’s been a couple of minor changes in audio,” said Richie. “We’ve changed all seven of the lectern microphones and are opting for the EV Polar Choice gooseneck podium mics – so that’s for the six panellists and Brian Nankervis’ lectern. We did that because they sound very natural and have a higher sensitivity -meaning you can sing into them, and they don’t distort nearly as quickly as the previous mics we were using. Sometimes, guests or panellists sing a tune, so having them sing so close into a condenser lectern mic was always challenging. The other great thing about these EV mics is that they have a 3-position switch to change the polar pattern between hyper, super, and regular cardioid. We use a super-cardioid pattern on the six lecterns and a regular cardioid pattern for Brian because he’s looking around more between the panel desks and host Julia Zemiro.”
The tour utilised in-house PA systems and toured an audio package supplied by JPJ Audio, including d&b audiotechnik E8 dialogue speakers for the panel mics, lectern and headset. One E8 on either side of the panel had a mix minus the opposite panellists, while a pair behind Julia and another pair on either side of the band risers had a full mix of all talking heads for the band and hosts.
Richie was touring an AVID S6L-24C rather than his usual S6L-32D, mainly due to weight and footprint. “We’ve lifted the 24C in and over a lot of auditorium seats, getting it in and out of the FOH position on many of these shows, and I was happy we did not have to lift the 32D!”
Operating the S6L-24C, Richie mainly had to adjust his ergonomics as the smaller console has one bank of encoders and one touch screen. “I did feel a bit like I was left-handed operating on it during the first couple of weeks, but I was determined to take it out and learn it better, and now I’m happy with it, and it’s been great.”
Richie’s main challenge is ensuring a good audio blend between the hosts and panellists with the band.
“You can’t go from having a very loud band back to quiet little headsets and panel mics,” he elaborated. “You have to get a good blend where everything sounds clear and balanced, but we still want to have the band mix with a good impact as it’s not called RocKwiz for nothing.”
Richie utilised a Waves Server, adding that the most common plugin he uses is the Primary Source Expander on all the panellists and vocal mics. “It does a great job reducing background noise when I have so many open mics during the Quiz sections of the show. I also use the onboard Pro-expander plugin with the PSE to further reduce the stage bleed between panel mics.”
“Avid is including an auto mixer as a feature with the next software release early this year, which will be great. That will help even more with this type of show in the future. But at the moment, it’s the combination of eq, the plugins and fingers on faders to keep it sounding tight.”
ALIA caught up with Newcastle’s Civic Theatre show, where ei Productions supplied a Martin line array PA. The day before, the show had been at Anita’s in Thirroul.
“Anita’s has a low ceiling over the stage, and the bottom of the PA hang is quite close to the panel desks,” Richie commented. “That took a little work to ring out the panel mics and keep it sounding nice and tight throughout the room. Today, I pushed the panel faders on the console up, and it sounds really good from the start. It’s just the difference in tone between one theatre and another where some can sound quite live and others surprisingly dry.”
While the drier, studio-sounding theatres often made life easier for Richie audio-wise, sometimes the band and hosts didn’t feel the audience response coming back from the room as much. He says that the best balance was where the room accentuated the crowd sound, but he still had tight control over the audio from the stage.
Monitors
Monitor Engineer Rod Matheson has worked for RocKwiz off and on since 2018. He occasionally missed the odd tour due to alternative touring commitments.
Rod’s main challenge on tour, other than finding the best breakfast cafe before driving to the next town/city, is principal guest artists change every week, so their audio requirements on stage can vary considerably, especially as there are duets and finales with up to four on stage at one time. Finding the right balance requires some finesse.
DiGiCo is his console of choice, and he adds that the SD12 is the right size for this tour … not too small to make operating difficult and not so big as to require four people to lift.
“Economically, it fits the bill, and technically, it has the correct processing, along with my preferred method of operating,” said Rod. “I use no outboard gear as the console has all the processing I require.”
The radio mic system comprised eight channels of Shure AD4Q with six handheld microphones fitted with Beta 58 capsules and two headsets. The headsets (DPA 4488) consist of a main and backup for the sole use of the host.
There are three Sennheiser G3 IEM channels, consisting of two main channels and a cue for monitoring. Generally, most artists do not require IEMs. Still, occasionally, as in Tim Freedman’s case at the Civic Theatre, artists get very accustomed to IEMs and find it disconcerting to revert back to wedges.
“At some shows, we have Auslan sign language representatives who require IEMs to hear every spoken word very clearly,” added Rod.
Band and artist monitors are d&b M4 wedges with five mixes for the band and two pairs downstage for guest artists during performance mode.
d&b E8s are spread around the stage over four tailored mixes so artists, hosts, and guests can hear each other during gameshow segments.
“As a tour goes, this is probably one of the most enjoyable in many a year!” commented Rod. “Lighting, sound, and stage streamlined every aspect to make it highly compact and efficient, allowing us the luxury of bumping in and out of venues in record times. Not to mention, every entourage member got on like a house on fire … all deluxe human beings, and I’m looking forward to another round!
