Waves in the mix for Stonemountain Orchestra
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Describing his choice of the Waves eMotion LV1 for this tour, Vegna comments: “In two words: sound quality. The LV1’s sound is exceptional. I was looking for a console that sounds amazing and is also small enough to actually tour with when going into smaller venues.
“My good friend Rompa (FOH, Ronny Bernstein), who tours with the rock band Europe, has been using the eMotion LV1 for years and always raves about how good it sounds. So I thought I’d give it a go for an earlier tour I did this spring with Peter Jöback. And wow, it did not disappoint. That tour was very challenging, but with the LV1 I could do things that no other console can.”
He continues: “So, when it was time to plan the Stonemountain Orchestra tour, I sat down with Sebastian Wennergren, our monitor engineer, to figure out if it could be done on the LV1 system. This band is very demanding, and everything has to sound absolutely perfect, both in the PA and all IEMs. However, the console still has to be small enough to be in and out quickly in a variety of venues. The LV1 fit the bill and, again, did not disappoint.”
“Another benefit,” he adds, “is that any of the eight plugin slots can be sidechained individually. For example, on the bass I can have one compressor that reacts to the actual bass, another that reacts to the kick, and, if needed, a third one that reacts to the cowbell. Very flexible. And since I quite often run both FOH and monitors for different bands, it’s really cool that I can have different delay groups for different outputs. This means that I can have the latency very low in IEMs while having it a bit higher for the PA where it doesn’t matter as much.”
He remarks that a crucial advantage is the LV1’s setup time, especially when visiting festivals. “It is impressive how fast we can get things going. The build time for FOH is less than a minute, and the footprint is about 50x50cm. I don’t know if there is another system with this power that can match that. And when the show is done, I just close my Peli and roll out before anyone notices who stole their coffee (it was me…).
“Moreover, since the LV1 system is modular, you can really tailor your setup to fit your needs. You can run everything on a laptop or hook up a touch monitor, or choose to use one or two Waves FIT Controllers. Also, you can have a case with internal IO, or not. It’s really fun to see how everyone has their own way of building this. There are some really creative and amazing LV1 setups out there.”
Vegna comments about his setup, “The Stonemountain Orchestra is a quite complex beast to tame. There are 14 musicians on stage, and they like to have guest artists. So we run 15 stereo IEMs. Starting from the stage, we have around 50 inputs, all connected to the FOH console where I run a 64-channel eMotion LV1. From there I share all the boxes with my monitor engineer, who also has a 64-channel LV1 mixer up on stage, mixing four wireless IEMs and eleven wired IEMs. We actually use the two headphone outputs on the IONIC 16 since they sound really clean and nice.”
Vegna sums up: “For me there are two things that can never be compromised: sound quality and reliability. When it comes to these, the eMotion LV1 has proven to be second to none. It gives both me and the artist the confidence to deliver the best possible concert experience for the audience.”
