Brett Orrison Chooses Waves Live Tools As Front-of-House For The Black Angels

Brett Orrison, front of house engineer for The Black Angels, is utilizing Waves Live tools on the 2013 Indigo Meadow tour.

Specifically, Orrison, who is a Waves Audio/Greg Price “Young Gun,” is traveling with a Waves MultiRack SoundGrid with two DSP servers, as well as an Allen and Heath iDR64 equipped with an M-Waves card and the iLive T112 surface. He uses a Dell Precision Laptop to steer the SoundGrid DSP servers while multi-track recording with PreSonus Studio One.

“I’m running 39 channels of Waves plug-ins,” Orrison explains. “There are 23 instrument channels, 3 stereo groups, 8 aux and the stereo bus, all routed through Waves. Having so many tools to choose from is pretty wild and has without a doubt made my mixes more consistent.

“The Q10 Paragraphic EQ and C6 Multiband Compressor on the master buss makes things bigger, and that helps me dial in a room a lot faster than using only EQ. The Waves InPhase plugin helps align my lead singers’ three vocal lines. InPhase, takes care of the slight issues a polarity flip won’t fix. Waves IR-Live convolution reverb has taken over my drum reverbs.

“Having so many effects is really beneficial when mixing psychedelic music like The Black Angels.”

He continues: “I’m enjoying the Allen and Heath system and its easy integration with Waves SoundGrid. It’s as easy as setting an insert IO to Waves SoundGrid and pushing the insert button in on the channel. My favorite part about the setup is the virtual sound check.

With a few very quick configuration changes, the system can be changed from live processing and recording to virtual sound check playback of pre-recorded multi-channel files, directly through the same SoundGrid MultiRack processing. This allows me to adjust each channel’s dynamics, EQ, etc. in exactly the same way I would with a full band on stage.

“It’s pretty cool to have sound check well on its way before the stage is pinned. I’ve found myself designing sound rather then trying to control it, which has been the biggest change in my day-to-day mixing. The rig is set up in 30 minutes with all the settings from last night’s mix ready to go. Starting from where you left off the night before leaves more time for creative ‘manipulation.’ This is a great rig!”

To check out an extended conversation with Orrison, go here.

Waves Live

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