Def Leppard hears it all with DMI-KLANG
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It's also significant to point out that the North American tour marked the first time that Def Leppard enjoyed the benefits of KLANG’s immersive in-ear monitor mixing solution, provided via a DMI-KLANG card-equipped DiGiCo Quantum5 monitor console supplied by touring sound company Clair Global. The use of the KLANG system created a more manageable SPL environment onstage that reportedly made the group’s performances more enjoyable than ever while simultaneously helping to protect their hearing.
How Def Leppard and KLANG got together is an interesting story. The KLANG platform first came to the attention of Ted Bible, longtime monitor mixer for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members and two-time American Music Awards winners, when one of the band members downloaded the KLANG:app and wanted to try it out. This was just before the pandemic closed down touring for over two years, which gave Bible more time to become familiar with it, including taking an online class on the product and technology with KLANG:technologies’ Phil Kamp.
Its first deployment for Def Leppard would be on the 36-date The Stadium Tour, which kicked off on 16 June at Atlanta’s Truist Park. The band, which formed in 1976 in Sheffield, UK and has been performing more or less continuously ever since and with virtually the same lineup of musicians, didn’t require extensive rehearsals ahead of the tour. However, the pandemic compelled them to have a backup musician for each band member and that group did three and a half weeks of rehearsals in Los Angeles ahead of the tour start. It was the perfect environment for Bible, who has been with Def Leppard since 2002’s X Tour as systems and monitor engineer, to get deeply hands-on with the KLANG system and evangelize it to the band.
“One of the things I especially like about the DMI-KLANG card is that I can simply slap it into the DiGiCo Quantum5 I’m using on tour, add a Mac Mini computer connected through a network cable and switch, and I immediately have 64x32 I/O, which doesn’t eat up any physical connections on the console,” he explains. “Once that’s in place, there’s not much else to it. The band has been playing these songs for decades and I’ve been mixing their monitors for years, so we all know what they want to hear onstage. The KLANG system gets it to them cleanly and reliably.”
Bible says most of the band instantly took to the KLANG system, enjoying its ability to keep instrument relationships steady as they moved about the stage, in conjunction with the Shure PSM 1000 transmitters and JH Audio Sharona IEMs they’re using.
