Veteran live engineers Greg Price and Myles Hale are using Avid VENUE | S6L systems on Black Sabbath’s farewell ‘The End’ world tour at front of house and monitors, respectively.
Price, who has worked with bands such as Van Halen, KISS, and Rage Against The Machine, has been mixing FOH for Black Sabbath since 1997.
“I’ve been famous for Ozzy’s ‘vocal pyramid’—his vocal chain of plug-ins—but then I got my hands on the new console,” Price says. “Now I’m not using any plug-ins on Ozzy’s channel, only a very modest channel EQ and an on-board brick wall limiter for when he screams into his mic. The sound is absolutely stunning—I’ve never heard Ozzy’s vocal quality like this!”
Monitor engineer Myles Hale states, “As soon as the drummer [Tommy Clufetos] came in he said, ‘Oh my god, what changed? These are the same speakers I’ve always had!’ I explained to him that I wish I could say that I got better, but really it’s this new console. It sounds like a badass analog console except with all the great user features that come with digital.”
VENUE | S6L offers the power to handle high channel counts while ensuring stability and very low latency. It’s powered by the same VENUE software as other Avid systems, enabling Price and Hale to quickly transition from the VENUE | Profiles they’ve used on previous tours.
“With a push of a button it’s reacting similar to my Profile experience, but it’s so much more than that,” Price explains. “Everything is right in front of me, from my groups to my VCA’s to my special inputs, and I can create a separate layout snapshot for every song in my setlist. The new Layout Mode is absolutely essential for me—it resonates with my style of mixing.”
With a large-scale mix bus capacity, VENUE | S6L allows Hale to handle a multitude of mixes with one-touch access to any mix on the faders. “Now I’ve got more auxes than I know what to do with. I’ve got spare tech mixes spun up in case the band want it differently. It’s nice, my hands are no longer tied,” Hale says. “Avid have made my job easier, which really is the key with awesome audio gear!”
Using Pro Tools and VENUE’s Virtual Soundcheck feature, Price and Hale are able to fine-tune mixes FOH and monitor mixes during rehearsal. Price notes, “In pre-production, I set up the S6L and Pro Tools and record everything the band does. After they play a song, they come straight into my room and we listen and we talk about everything. I cannot work without Pro Tools and the synergy that it offers my artists.”
