Inside The Concert System For The Rob Thomas “Cradlesong” North American Tour

After a decade with Matchbox Twenty, Rob Thomas branched off in 2005 with …Something To Be, becoming the first solo artist from a group to debut at number one. He’s best known for the 1999 triple-platinum hit “Smooth” he co-wrote with Santana. This year we caught up with his Cradlesong tour towards the end of the US dates.

The sound system was supplied by LMG of Orlando. Live Sound Engineer Jim “Yak” Yakabuski is best known for seven years with Van Halen and subsequent duties on Avril Lavigne’s last three tours, working her recent “Best Damn Thing” tour as LMG’s senior touring engineer instead of as an independent.

He’s also author of 2001’s Sound Reinforcement Techniques: Tips and Tricks of a Concert Sound Engineer. Yakabuski mixes on a Digidesign Venue with a Profile control surface and dual 48-channel stage racks.

LMG’s standard Digidesign tour package is based around a Front of House Venue rack, equipped with five DSP cards and fully-loaded with Venue Pack, Venue Pack Pro and All Access plug-in bundles.

An inspection of his D-Show software plug-in racks reveals that he employs Digidesign’s Smack! on vocals, and the Eventide Reverb from their Anthology II bundle for vocals and drums.

“My new favorite plug-in is the Eventide Reverb as it sounds fantastic, is very simple to use, but also has some bells and whistles,” Yakabuski comments. “In the new record’s title track, there’s an explosive reverb that echoes several times, and this was possible with the Eventide utilizing the ‘delay’ section of the effect.”

Jim Yakabuski with LMG Touring Digidesign Venue Profile tour package. (click to enlarge)

A Joe Meek SC2 Photo Optical compressor is used on the drum sub-group to give clarity and edge, while a Bomb Factory Purple MC77 1176-style FET limiter tightens up the bass. Other notable plugs include MoogerFooger’s band-passed delay and Crane Song’s Phoenix, used on all electric guitar and vocal channels.

He also deploys TC Electronic’s Master X3 virtual Finalizer across the matrix output for the mastering of the recording feed. Concertgoers were offered All Access Today LiveFlash USB flash drive wristbands with a recording of the show for $40, just like on Matchbox Twenty’s 2008 “Exile in America” tour.

On the left side of Yak’s double-wide Venue rack is a 128-track ProTools HD system with an Apple Mac Pro computer and four Glyph Technologies GT 050Q RAID hard drives, providing the benefits of Virtual Sound Check, by playing back tracks from previous performances through the console’s channels.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *