Jared Daly signed on mid tour in 2014 to help fill the monitor engineer position and has exposed the band to the benefits of Shure's PSM1000 IEMs, AXT600 spectrum manager and the AXT200 wireless vocal mic. With input from each of the band, he has subsequently upgraded their in-ear monitoring and helped them to use Shure wireless technology more extensively throughout 2015.
"The band have always used in-ears; they all have very specific mix requirements, including click tracks and cues," explains Daly, who is currently in the USA with the group on tour. "The band and crew have been using Shure PSM900 units for a few years on stage; they owned those when I joined.
"Oli always used wedges for monitoring on-stage, right through their 2014 dates, but as that tour was finishing, they were thinking of upgrading, because they were getting a few dropouts at gigs where the RF spectrum was really busy, like at festivals. So at Wembley in December 2014, they tried out a rack of Shure PSM1000s, and Oli changed over to in-ear monitors. The guys all liked the 1000s, so we started using them in 2015. The 1000s are much more stable in a festival environment; the two antennas on the beltpacks make all the difference."
In August, when Bring Me The Horizon played the 2015 Reading and Leeds festival, the Axient AXT600 spectrum manager was added, and Oli began trialling an AXT200 handheld wireless mic with a Beta 58 head, which was subsequently adopted on the US tour.
"The AXT600 has made my life so much easier," explains Jared Daly. "It's a big step up from what the UHF-R system offered, and being able to sync it with Wireless Workbench is a game-changer. Now we have the Axient mic as well, I can check audio levels throughout the show and back off the vocal gain on the fly remotely via the software if it's too high. Oli constantly switches between singing and screaming, so finding a gain setting that works for both is a priority, and the ability to change it during the show is excellent."
(Jim Evans)
