The band is currently supporting One Direction on their worldwide Where We Are stadium tour and has just announced a monster headline USA, UK and European arena tour for 2015. The band is using a comprehensive range of Sennheiser wireless and hardwired microphone and wireless monitor systems specified by FoH engineer John Delf and Ben Booker who handles monitors.
"5SOS has grown faster than any band I can remember and they appear to be well known in pretty much every major territory in the world, especially by teenage girls!" remarked John Delf, a highly experienced UK sound engineer (Lily Allen, The Script, The Feeling and many more) and owner of The Edge recording studio in Cheshire.
Delf, who has been with the band since the beginning, recruited Ben Booker for monitor duties once the original One Direction arena shows had finished in August 2013 and 5SOS started playing their own headline shows. Booker is himself a highly respected engineer, both at monitors and FoH (Scissor Sisters, PJ Harvey, Spiritualized), although his task with 5SOS is mixing the in-ear systems for the band. Both engineers have long-standing relationships with Sennheiser.
"Our biggest audio challenge is getting the mix heard above the screaming teenage fans," remarked Booker, "so our mic choices are made for maximum rejection with great quality. For the three stage front vocals we use Sennheiser e 945s. They have a super-tight pick-up which helps reject the cymbals and screaming girls. We use e 904s on toms and snare bottom and another one on the drum vocal as it's small and has a very tight pick-up pattern which, again, helps reject the cymbals.
"We've got an e 901 and 902 in the kick drum, which I find to be a great combination of sounds, and an MD 441 on the snare top. This is an extravagant choice, but it sounds great - full and deep with a tight pattern to reject hi-hat noise. We've got Neumann KM 184s on the hi-hats and overheads and e 906s on the guitars which are set with the top-end boost on. Finally we've got a couple of MK 4s that we are using as ambient mics, but these sound so good that they may be moving up to guitar duty soon."
For wireless monitoring purposes, Booker selected Sennheiser's evolution wireless 300 G3 IEM system, of which he has no less than eight systems on this tour; four for the band, two for the techs, a spare on a matrix and one for himself for PFL (pre-fader listening) / cueing. "The G3 system is tried and tested and just works," said Booker. "It always sounds great. Everything is fully networked, so any changes that need to be made are done via laptop."
(Jim Evans)
