FOH engineer Garry Brown: Mixing Phish at Sphere with Lawo

In the last issue of Headliner, we discovered how a seasoned audio team mixed front-of-house, monitors and a live broadcast for Phish’s four-night, 68-song run at Sphere in Las Vegas – delivering an enhanced concert experience that left audiences captivated. Once the stage was set, the team was poised and ready to use the latest AV technology to execute the American rock band’s show, including the venue’s comprehensive in-house audio routing and mixing system from German manufacturer Lawo and Holoplot’s revolutionary immersive speaker array. Here, FOH engineer Garry Brown delves deeper into the show’s requirements, and reveals why Lawo mc² 56 mixing consoles made his job that much easier…

When did you start using the Lawo mc² 56 in your workflow?

I switched to Lawo around 18 months ago. I came across it when we did a demo for the Holoplot system in Burbank. I heard the difference in the sound quality compared to another console that was there, and basically decided to try it. I took it out for two shows, and sonically it was just far superior than where I had been. We then went on tour with it, and the workflow was amazing. I enjoyed mixing on it and getting around the surface was easy. Those previous two shows had been the Trey Anastasio Band and then Phish for New Years; after that we basically made the decision to take it to the big band. On the first night I was nervous because I hadn't done it with them before, but afterwards I couldn’t go back - it just sounds so good.

Are there any functionality or redundancy features on the Lawo consoles that have proved invaluable?

We have to make sure everything is redundant. I have two surfaces at front of house; the main one is the big 48-fader console, and I have a second one which is a 32 fader console – both of them are mc² 56. The brains for the consoles are on stage, and we have a Dell Cluster that gives us redundancy. I think the Dell cluster can do nine consoles, and we have three sets – each has a redundant pair going. So we're technically running six consoles on the redundant cluster. Each of them has redundant processing. And then we have redundant stage racks, we’ve actually got three sets of them because of the three worlds. There’s 160 inputs coming from the stage so everyone has 160 preamps.

Which features do you like most about the Lawo consoles?

For me, it’s all about sound. I switched to Lawo because there was a noticeable improvement in the sound quality of the show. Every input opened up, it breathed, it became natural sounding – the summing and width was great. Trey the guitarist is a perfectionist and is always pushing the boundaries to get as good as we can get; he does it with his guitar playing so I have to do the same. Lawo gave us a massive step up sonically.

As I’ve grown as a mixer, I've tried to make sure I'm going to the right place for the right gear, so I don't become stuck in my ways and just use something that I'm comfortable with. The steps I've made to where I am now have all been sonic driven. It's all about improving the sound of a show and delivering a better show experience for the fans. Just like Trey works on his guitar rig, I have to work on my world. He's got beautiful Trainwreck amps, and I've got a beautiful Lawo.

Technically the console has two modes. You’ve got faders hard patched to the surface, and then you have Reveal. You hit a VCA, you hit a group, you hit an AUX, and it rolls out what is technically in that. I live in Reveal; in my normal show I have a lot of groups as opposed to VCAs purely because I have group processing. For the Sphere show I had to change away from that, and it's all VCAs, so I live in the centre section with 16 faders in front of me. Because of the sonic quality of the console, I’m not doing a lot in terms of EQ-ing, and I don’t have a lot of outboard gear. You’ve got to make it right at the source; the band has great instruments and plays amazing, so I’m basically just capturing what they’re doing and making it work for the room.

Which pieces of outboard gear are you using?

I have a summing mixer – a Burl Audio B32 Vancouver. With my normal setup, eight stereo pairs go into that, then that goes through a master bus processor from Rupert Neve Designs, into a Kush Audio Clariphonic. So that's essentially my stereo bus that just comes back as an insert return. Outside of that I have some groups on my normal setup. There's a drum group which has an Overstayer M-A-S, and that goes into a Rupert Neve master bus processor as well. Then the bass group has a Rupert Neve Shelford Channel and the distressor and that's basically the insert rack. I then have two Bricastis that are doing vocal reverb and drum reverb.

I do use a Waves SoundGrid server, and it's basically just doing choruses, any other reverbs, and delays. I've got two inserts; one on the key Moog, a C4 Multi-Band Compressor, and one on a Nord Effects channel which gives haunted house sounds. There's a C4 on there as well, just to help them sit in the mix. I run two Pro Tools multitrack systems – a main and a redundant. They’re connected via MADI HD so we’re up to 192 channels for each of those. We also then have two smaller Pro Tools rigs that are doing 32 channels and recording stems. One is a stem backup of the broadcast world, and one is a stem version of my world. With Phish, we capture everything right from when they’re on stage doing soundcheck. Everything is multi tracked, it all goes to the archive, and then they do whatever they want to do with it.

For Sphere, all I did – apart from the summing mixer – was duplicate my stereo bus insert. So I have eight more channels of Rupert Neve master bus processor and eight more channels of the Kush Audio Clariphonic. The mix is the same; my console, my faders - all that is the same, but how I’m driving it out of the console is now different. I basically had to direct assign from inputs to arrays. I had to sit down and decide where I’m placing these instruments and where I want each of them to have their home position; I now have the ability to take them out of that home position and put them into an object, and that object will then move it around the room.

Were any special effects used with regards to the 3D capabilities of the system, and did this throw up challenges?

The movement of sound sources around the room is the special effect. I’ve got 64 drivelines to make it immersive; I'm not doing a surround bus – I'm having to think about how I place things. It’s about choosing to have the clavinet going backwards and forwards across the room, or having the bass guitar spinning around the room. Now things have homes to make it sound nice and wide, and bring a real sense of immersion. There can be time-based issues and you have to be mindful of how you place things. Because Sphere is so big, you can make the song fall apart if you don't place things in the right place.

(Images credit: Alive Coverage)

Discover how the audio team mixed front-of-house, monitors and a live broadcast for Phish’s four-night, 68-song run at Sphere in Las Vegas here.