Wilderado, take KLANG:vokal on the road
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Despite their solid success, not everything was perfect in the Wilderado-camp. Struggling with monitor wedges and inconsistent set ups on stage, they knew something needed to change. When audio engineer, Davis McCoy, joined them at the beginning of the year, he recommended KLANG immersive in-ear monitors. They have not looked back since.
“As we started building longer sets and were doing more and more dates, I found I just couldn’t sing through the show,” says lead singer and guitarist, Max Rainer. “It was too taxing trying to project and to hear myself in the on-stage wedges.”
The band’s first experience of in-ear monitors had been as openers for Kings of Leon. “We used the house engineer and rented in some IEMs,” recalls Rainer. “We had next to no sound check time, no show files and just tried to get things into a workable state. The show went OK, but nobody in the band was really happy with how their ears sounded, although they were still better than wedges.”
A couple of months later, and with their first post-COVID tour looming, McCoy decided to build an in-ear monitor rig that would be compact and light enough for them to travel with.
“We thought how efficient it would be if we could fly with it and also have that be the same piece of gear we take in our van,” he says. “I’d seen ads and posts on Instagram for the KLANG:vokal which were really interesting. But the thing that really sold it for me was the single rack space, and that it would do Dante to MADI conversion within the unit.”
McCoy then found a company that made another single rackmount piece of equipment with 32 preamps, 32 outputs in a single rack space on terminal blocks, which would feed Dante into the KLANG. “Then the MADI output on the KLANG is just a split output of the preamps,” he continues. “That was perfect for getting all the inputs on to my console without me having to carry a stage box or anything else. Now, in just a single Peli case, we have three wireless in-ears, two wired routers, analogue split, the KLANG:vokal and the preamps all in one. And when it goes on a plane, it’s under 100lbs, which is perfect.”
With the KLANG:vokal now maxed out and plans to expand the show, there are also plans to up the ante on the KLANG system, with the wish list including the KLANG:konductor. Davis is also about to take delivery of a DiGiCo SD11, keeping the compact nature of his rig, but bringing additional functionality to it.
