Ebdon and the band began the tour back in February 2015. At the time, Ebdon, who has also mixed front-of-house sound for Aerosmith, Annie Lennox and Matchbox Twenty, discovered that the L-Acoustics V-DOSC system that he had come to count on wasn't available. "The V-DOSC was simply still so popular that one wasn't always available - bands and production managers loved it," he recalls. "That first six months on the road [without L-Acoustics] was 'an interesting experiment,'" he says with understated discretion.
That summer, however, a K1/K2 system did become available, through Sound Image, which has been the tour's main SR vendor throughout. That began a Lego-like puzzle, with Ebdon and a series of system technicians trying out various configurations that changed over time. The system started with two hangs of 10 K1 per side with four to six K2 boxes slung underneath, depending on the size of the venue.
Most recently, the main arrays consist of 14 K1s per side with two K2s underneath, always powered and processed with LA8-equipped LA-RAKs. In addition, there are 12 K2s per side used as side fills, 10 Kara boxes flown as rear-fills for arenas and stadiums, and six Kiva speakers per side for front-fills.
The low end has usually been handled using 10 SB28 subs ground stacked; however, Ebdon has recently taken to hanging additional K1-SB subs alongside the K1 hangs. "I used to think that would create too much bass in the roof when we put them on the top of the arrays," he explains. "But, on the sides, they really seemed to add a dimension. We started trying that on the South American leg of the tour. After we'd done a few shows like that, we left them off for a show and that's when we realized that we really missed them. So now they're part of the design."
In addition to Ebon, the tour's core audio crew members include Jim Miller, L-Acoustics system tech; Dan Bower and Matt McQuaid, PA techs; Marcus Douglas, monitor tech and crew chief; and Bill Chrysler, monitor engineer.
(Jim Evans)
