Front of house engineer Brett Orrison (Widespread Panic, The Black Angels, Percy Sledge, Nevilles Forever, Dear Jerry/Jerry Garcia Tribute) chooses to use Waves Audio plugins, Waves MultiRack, and Waves SoundGrid technology when touring with Widespread Panic.
The mix is done on a DiGiCo console with integrated Waves MultiRack and Waves SoundGrid DSP servers. The recording is done via a DiGiGrid MGB interface that gets the multichannel 96 kHz MADI stream via Ethernet to the recording PC.
Orrison notes, “Every Widespread Panic concert is streamed live and available for purchase the day after the show – which means that every night I’m mixing a live show, a live stream, and a recording, all at the same time, and both the stream and the mix-for-purchase must be studio-quality.”
“Waves lets me to do all this by bringing studio tools into my live console. I use Waves plugins to get some classic sounds, including tape saturation, stereo imaging and rich compression. I use the Waves SSL G-Master Buss Compressor to get some nice tones out of the drums and vocals. I really enjoy this compressor a lot. Additionally, the Waves S1 Stereo Imager is a great tool for placing things in the stereo field. This makes it easier to hear all the instruments, all of the time.”
“Widespread Panic is a complex band with a lot going on, so getting the stereo keys such as the properly-mixed Leslie speaker and the piano a little wider goes a long way towards making the mix clearer. The Kramer Master Tape is one of my favorite Waves plugins, and I use it to saturate the keyboard just enough, to rub out that ‘keyboard’ sound. The Waves DeEsser on vocals is a mainstay for me since I can grab unwanted frequencies only when they appear, without having to use an EQ. The lead vocal chain has two DeEssers and the SSL G- Master Buss Compressor.”
Orrison concludes, “Waves has bridged the gap between the studio and the live show. I can now achieve lots of studio tricks and tones in the live environment that were not possible when I first started mixing.”
