Production sound mixer Adam Young on recording Kim Kardashian and Brad Pitt on Actors on Actors

Adam Young’s career as a production sound mixer runs the gamut: prestige series, feature films, daytime television, documentaries, extreme sports, commercials and awards events including the Grammys and Golden Globes are just some of the categories found on his extensive CV. Just a few highlights are Variety Studio: Actors on Actors, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Last Call with Carson Daly, and commercial campaigns for major brands such as Nissan, Draft Kings and Playstation.

He has depended on Lectrosonics’ latest generation of fully digital wireless since it was released — the DSQD and DSR4 four-channel receivers; DBSM, DBSMD, and DCHT transmitters, and M2 Duet system for crew communications. He describes how the systems’ RF handling, audio quality, range, and durability helps him reach high channel counts and deliver consistently excellent results under demanding conditions.

Having only one chance to get it right is par for the course at Variety Studio: Actors on Actors, which has featured guests including Jennifer Anniston, Kim Kardashian, Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Jodie Foster, Margot Robbie, Cillan Murphy, Emma Stone, Cate Blanchett, and many more since it started in 2014.

“You’ve got high-profile actors, two at a time, interviewing each other,” explains Young. “They’re coming in on a 45-minute time frame to have a completely unscripted conversation. You can’t call someone back in. You can ask them to start a take again, but it’s not going to have the same energy. 

"They shoot very wide, which means I can’t fly boom mics as a primary. I’ve done 17 seasons of Actors on Actors. Every season since the Lectrosonics digital came out, I haven’t taken a single wireless hit. I’d really highlight that as evidence of their reliability.”

While Actors on Actors does not require especially high channel counts, much of Young’s other work does.

“I had about 30 channels of wireless,” he says of a recent and yet-unreleased project. “The scenario was a classroom, where a celebrity comes in and surprises the kids, gives a speech, and takes questions. The director’s vision was a free-flowing Q&A with all the students. I’ve got three boom operators covering zones, six cameras, and [the celebrity] was there for a maximum of two hours. So, no retakes. 

"Because the digital receivers are backward-compatible with the Hybrid transmitters, we were able to use a mix of the two and squeeze 30 clean frequencies into a small L.A. classroom location, and it worked flawlessly. Lectrosonics really delivered for me there.”

RF needs were even more extreme on the Foo Fighters’ documentary special Preparing Music for Concerts. “The entire Foo Fighters frequency team was there for their live sound, and I have to work around the channels they have up,” Young recalls.

“They were also running Duet systems for their in-ears. It made for about 45 to 50 channels in total. I coordinated with their monitor engineer Ian Beveridge. It came down to the ability of our gear to be fully wideband, not being beholden to frequency blocks. "

If I had to put three channels on block 21 and one more in block 22 and sneak another two in on block 19, no big deal. The shoot was a smashing success. I can’t overemphasize that you had a full concert sound team with things like every guitar having a transmitter, combined with a full film team, all using Lectrosonics wireless, and it all went off without a glitch.”

With creative needs driving the need for more frequencies but larger market forces shrinking that spectrum, Young relies on the wideband tenacity of Lectrosonics digital to extract proverbial blood from stone.

“As you know, production is under assault,” he observes. “We’re a speck of dust to big telecom and other entities. The cleanest spectrum in L.A., for example, is 470 to 536 MHz, but there can still be hits from emergency bands, or just strange behavior because of reflected signals ghosting onto other frequencies. 

"But, because of the filtering of the Lectro digital wideband stuff, and because that lets it squeeze more usable channels out of a given bandwidth, I’ve had no problems getting large channel counts. With Lectrosonics digital, I can match any of my transmitters to any of my receivers, switch between my main cart and my bag, give people options, and have no problems making everything work.”