Tom Wiggans, front-of-house engineer for The Cranberries has joined the growing number of live sound engineers utilizing Waves Audio.
Wiggans (UB40, Squeeze, Wet Wet Wet, and Roni Size & Reprazent) has adopted Waves’ SoundGrid live platform and plugins on tour with the Irish alt-rock band.
“I ended up using SoundGrid especially for problem solving,” Wiggans explains. “The most impressive thing for me is the Waves C4, since it is the first multiband compressor that I have used that I can actually hear working when making the subtlest of changes.
“I use it on the main vocal, backing vocals and bass. I also use the GTR3 guitar amps and stomp pedals on the DI outputs.”
Wiggans likes to work at getting the source as correct as possible and generally applies effects/dynamics as a last resort, but in cases where this isn’t possible Waves plugins add a substantial amount of warmth to the process.
“I use MaxxBass on the bass guitar to remove the room resonance frequencies from the source and then reinforce them with the harmonics,” he adds. “It worked quite well in getting rid of that ‘one-note’ bass sound. Also, H-Comp sounds great as a parallel bus compressor on the drums and it really adds weight to the snare.”
Wiggans is part of a growing trend of live sound professionals who are making the move to the next generation workflow with Waves plugins and WavesLive SoundGrid.
