USA - From their beginnings in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Cage The Elephant have gone on to become one of their generation’s premier rock bands, earning dozens of gold, platinum, and multiplatinum certifications as well as two consecutive Best Rock Album Grammy Awards. But they are best known and celebrated for their highly physical live performances.
The stage, they like to say, is their home turf, where they are most comfortable and unchained. That’s clear on their 45-show Neon Pill tour, which kicked off on 20 June in Salt Lake City, with shows in Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and numerous other cities. What those audiences are able to experience this time, however, sounds as close to the band’s recordings as possible, thanks to the inclusion of one of the first Fourier Audio transform.engine units to hit the road in the US on a major tour.
A Dante-connected server designed to run VST3-native software plugins in a live environment, the Fourier Audio transform.engine brings premium studio software to live sound and broadcast applications. The new device gives engineers and creatives access to the very best studio-grade processing on a robust platform that is specifically designed for the rigours and complexities of live productions.
Cage The Elephant’s front-of-house engineer, Ashton Parsons, added the transform.engine to the control package for the tour, which includes a DiGiCo Quantum338 FOH console he’s piloting and a DiGiCo Quantum5 desk used by monitor mixer Patrick Moore, all provided by Clair Global.
“The transform.engine was on my radar when it was first announced and I put in a request for it back in April when I was spec’ing gear for the tour,” Parsons recalls. “And just before the first festival dates ahead of the tour – the first one was Hangout in Gulf Shores, Alabama in mid-May – Clair approved the software and hardware for touring. I am super grateful to have had it. So many audio nerds have come up to ask me questions about it on show dates and online once word got out that I had it.”
Parsons has been able to utilise virtually his entire array of preferred plug-in processors. These include the Fab Filter Q3 dynamic equaliser that he’s applying to most of the guitars as well as the master bus. “I've also been using some of the Audioscape plug-ins, Brainworx/Plugin Alliance, and Sound Theory’s Gullfoss Live low-latency resonance-suppressor plug-in, because with this band, there’s a lot of crazy intentional noises happening on stage, and it’s keeping those in check,” he says.
“They’re a rock and roll band – there’s no click and they have a lot of guitar pedals, the band is always changing their settings. There’s a lot going on in terms of tonality, so having the ability to process them using some more advanced plug-ins that previously hadn’t been available live has been fantastic. In addition, I’ve been able to make use of plug-ins that they used in the studio to recreate certain vocal effects for this tour, which they’ve been very happy with.”
An important aspect, he says, is the support he’s getting as a new user on a new platform. “Fourier Audio’s support has been top-notch,” he says. “I’m able to have direct access to their knowledge base, and when any small issue or unknown has popped up, they’ve been able to get me fixed up in under an hour.”
