Veteran mix engineer Andy Meyer is utilizing an Avid VENUE D-Show console for his front of house mixing for the latest leg of the Guns N Roses world tour.
Meyer, who has used VENUE consoles since 2006 on artists ranging from Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson to Sevendust, Motley Crue and Rage Against The Machine, points to the console’s flexibility as a major asset on this particular tour.
“It’s a big band – three guitars, two keyboards, bass, drums and vocals – and that means not just plenty of inputs, but lots of challenges in terms of just getting everything to sit right in the mix,” Meyer explains. “The ability to easily set up snapshots is the most important feature for me.
“Setting up different panning and EQ settings in scenes throughout the course of a song allows me to create different imaging and tonality for greater impact. It makes the vocals and solos stand out to really create a better mix.”
The band’s fast-paced show means plenty of quick, complex changes, most of which would be impossible without VENUE’s snapshot automation. “I’m using roughly 238 scenes throughout the show,” says Meyer, adding that he’s connected a footswitch to advance through scenes. “It works great for freeing up my hands, though I realized after the show that I was standing on one leg for three hours!”
Supplementing a compressed schedule of rehearsals with VENUE’s Virtual Soundcheck enabled Meyer to build a massive library of scene snapshots in time for the tour, which spans several continents. “I was brought on kind of late in the game, so I only had about two weeks of rehearsals to put it all together,” he says. “It was pretty intensive, but I was able to sit after the rehearsals and work with the live tracks.”
VENUE’s native implementation of plug-ins is also a major asset, says Meyer. “I’m using 100 plug-ins in all, including Digidesign stuff, Waves and McDSP. All 100 plug-ins are scoped into each of the 238 scenes – from effects changes to compression and EQ changes – per scene, per song. I’m a big fan of the Waves Renaissance and the McDSP ML4000 plug-ins, as well as the Digidesign classic plug-ins.”
With the tour’s demanding schedule, Meyer says VENUE is an indispensable part of his arsenal. “It frees me up and enables me to manage more than I could ever manage on a traditional console. I’m able to spend more time creating a better live mix.”
