Mixing a live broadcast for Phish at Sphere

In the last issue of Headliner, we learned how monitor engineer Robert ‘Void’ Caprio used Lawo mc² 56 mixing consoles on Phish’s four-night, 68-song run at Sphere in Las Vegas; Void discussed his workflow and revealed some of the challenges associated with mixing a band that refuses to do things the conventional way. In this final part of the series, broadcast engineer Vance Powell explains how he webcasts every Phish show from an OB truck, and explains how the Lawo desk brings all the elements of this spectacular show together…

Tell us who you are and what you do.

My name is Vance Powell. I'm from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm the owner of Sputnik Sound production and mix studios, and I am the broadcast mixer for Phish.

How did you get involved in this project?

I have been producing or co-producing records with Trey Anastasio and Phish since about 2017. FOH engineer Garry Brown and I have known each other for 25 years or so. I ran into Garry out on the road; he was mixing the broadcast and the PA for the band, and that's a tough one because the masters for those are totally different. So, they asked me if I wanted to go down and do some shows in Mexico. I went and did it, and was just struck by how great all the people were, and how enjoyable it was. Then they said, ‘hey, we’ve got a few dates in April; do you want to go do them?’ So I did. Then I was like, I guess I might as well do the summer now, and then it was like, I might as well do the fall, and then the MSG run, and then Mexico came up again, and now here I am at Sphere.

Tell us about your workflow.

Out here at the OB truck, we're at the end of a long piece of fibre that runs up to the stage, and there's a bunch of power cores up there. We all have our own mic pres on our respective desks, so we all have control individually. That's a really good thing for us, because I need a different gain structure to Garry, because I don't have 45,000 or 50,000 watts of power and huge speakers behind me. Instead I have tiny speakers going through a tube which is essentially the Internet, so it's a different concept. All of the feeds come to me, and then I'm processing them with a lot of analogue gear to get the effects that I want. We do have a Waves SoundGrid that does some of the effects, but I'm basically taking it like I'm mixing a live record, being played live by live people.

What kind of outboard gear are you using?

I have a few things that are go-tos whether I'm making records, mixing records or doing a live broadcast. A couple of them are real simple: distressors, API EQs on kick and snare, LA-2A on the bass. I love these old Lexicon PCM 42 digital delays. I’ve also brought along a couple pieces of my own including this Looptrotter Monster, which is a Polish stereo compressor that’s kind of like an 1176 with a saturation circuit. It's really nice. Then we have some Empirical Labs Fatsos, and this Chandler RS124 compressor that I love.

On the output bus I'm using the same thing I've used for the majority of my career: an API 2500 as a stereo bus compressor, followed by a Kush Audio Clariphonic. And then we have a Manley Stereo Pultec EQ, a couple of Bricasti reverbs, and an Eventide H3000.

Could you tell us more about your workflow on the Lawo mc² 56 console?

One of the interesting things about the Lawo is that, unlike other digital boards where things are very much in place, it is a little more open ended. Any fader can be anything. Any fader could be a VCA, a group or an input. You can have a group output, a group return, an effects return or an AUX return, and then five channels with a VCA panel control. On each panel there’s six layers with an A-B split, which is incredibly powerful.

The EQ and the compressor sounds great; I'm really blown away by it. I'm an analogue guy so it’s not easy for me to say I really love the way it sounds, but I do. It's been a joy to mix on, and to me it's just an impressive piece of engineering,

How have you adapted to some of the challenges associated with mixing in a live scenario like this?

In the studio, it's all about the load in and the show. In other words, it's important to have all your pieces together on the front side, instead of going into a building that you've been in two or three times and having to sort it out. As far as the actual performance, it's exactly the same, because they're both the most important thing there is in the process of the job you're doing. The live performance that the band is playing on stage in front of the crowd is every bit as important as when they played it in the studio at the same level. You've got to make sure in the studio that you have everything right, so that nothing goes wrong in the session to kill the performance.

It's also important that the console, the mic pres, and everything else is redundant. So I have my own mic pres, but I’m also connected to Garry's mic pres, so if something goes wrong with mine I can hit one button and it instantly switches. It’s the same for him and the same for Void. That's a very cool feature. Also we have the UHD cores, which are the DSPs. I have two, Garry has two, and Void has two, which means that my console is actually running a mirror of itself all the time. If anything fails, it failsafes automatically because the live stream is important. Nobody wants to hear somebody come over the PA and say, ‘hey, the PA is broke’ or whatever, and nobody wants to hear that same thing for the live stream. It's all really important, and I can tell you that this Lawo mc² 56 has been rock solid.

Lead image credit: Alive Coverage