DiGiCo desks keep control for Maroon 5
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The tour began on 13 June in Lisbon, Portugal and travelled through Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, and France before concluding on 4 July in Birmingham.
But Maroon 5 also have a completely different live identity: their ongoing residency at the Dolby Live venue at Park MGM in Las Vegas, which they settle back into from 28 July through 12 August. On the road, they’re a stereo band; in Las Vegas, they arrive as an immersive experience through Dolby’s Atmos format. What stays consistent throughout is DiGiCo, the suite of audio consoles the band’s mix team deploys to manage every show’s sound.
Specifically, front of house is mixed on a DiGiCo Quantum 5 by Vincent Casamatta. Marcus Douglas manages the band’s monitors on a DiGiCo SD5, while Dave Rupsch handles lead singer Adam Levine’s vocals using an SD10. All three consoles, which reside on an Optocore network loop and share two SD-Racks, were supplied by Clair Global.
The addition of Dave Rupsch to focus on lead singer Adam Levine’s vocals in mid-2021 was a game changer, says Casamatta. Ironically, adding a console actually reduced the amount of overall gear needed to manage the sound, thanks to the desks’ onboard processing and highly flexible workflow options. “With everything on the loop, we have less gear and it sounds and works better than it ever did,” he says. “It sounds so much better not going through a splitter. The whole package has been really, really solid.”
While the Quantum 5 ostensibly mixes the same show regardless of whether it’s Prague or Las Vegas, Casamatta says the shift between stereo on the road and immersive in Las Vegas has subtle but significant distinctions. “I need my stereo show on the DiGiCo to exist at all times behind the immersive mix and vice versa,” he says. “So I'm literally booting up the same show file whether I'm mixing an immersive show or have a stereo two-bus mix happening. It doesn't matter. And that was a huge mandate of mine because I didn't want to compromise. No matter what format we were doing I wanted it to be the same mix, and the Quantum 5 made that easy.”
