The touring crew: Aaron Greig, Neil Dodd, Terry Smith and Sam Proctor (photo: Louise Stickland)
UK - Northern Irish rockers Snow Patrol were back on the road after a seven-year break, reaching out to fans with their new 2018 album Wildness and a sold-out UK arena tour.
Adlib was the audio provider, working with engineers, Nigel Pepper mixing FOH and Jamie Hickey on monitors. Robin Scott was the production manager at the helm, with Neil Mather tour manager.
Adlib provided crew, with systems specialist Sam Proctor and an L-Acoustics system. Sam was joined by Terry Smith who looked after stage and monitors for Jamie, plus Aaron Greig and Neil Dodd who completed the audio crew.
The Snow Patrol tour’s standard system configuration was 14 x K1 speakers a side with four KARA down-fills, together with eight K1 subs flown behind the main hangs to help direct the low end towards the back of arenas. These were supplemented by two side-hangs of 12 x K2 speakers each.
On the floor were 21 x KS28 subs in a spaced array. Seven stacks of three high subs, each with a single L-Acoustics X8 on top for front-fill.
This allowed each stack to be driven by a single amplifier, leading to tidy and logical cabling. The spaced sub array is Nigel and Sam’s preferred set-up for getting even and efficient coverage across the various rooms.
A flown cluster of four KARAs spec’d by Nigel eliminated the need for any in-fills, helping to keep the stage completely free, which was both an acoustic and an aesthetic decision leaving a clear stage and a flat floorspace uninterrupted by black boxes!
All speakers were driven by L-Acoustics’ LA12x amplifiers and all the processing completed at FOH via a Newton multi-source processor. Nigel’s console of choice is the Midas PROX which he ran with a selection of carefully chosen outboards.
Jamie Hickey has been with Snow Patrol since January 2018. With the band having not toured for seven years, some of the initial focus was dedicated to finding the newest technologies to suit their monitoring needs.
Jamie is using Sennheiser 2000 IEMs, and there are five band mixes plus a spare. Additional mixes include a guest mix, five tech mixes, a management mix and a cue mix.
With 88 inputs coming from the stage, Jamie’s desk was a DiGiCo SD7 which he ran with 32-bit input preamp cards.
Adlib supplied a full touring mics-and-stands package for the two opening acts together with a support monitor system and two Midas PRO2 consoles.
(Jim Evans)

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