Modern Mix Extravaganza

Working From Anywhere In The House
When he’s not bouncing between tours with Capital Cities, Atlas Genius, or The Ting Tings, Jason Stiegler is in the studio producing an eclectic range of projects, while in his spare time, he’s out spinning tracks at venues and parties across Southern California.

More intimate clubs and parties in particular provide a way to test out new tracks and gauge audience reaction, he explains, and for these gigs, he carries a system headed by a Mackie DL32R 32-channel wireless digital mixer joined by SRM450 loudspeakers and SRM1550 subwoofers.

“What’s great about the DL32R is that it can be set up anywhere in the house,” Stiegler offers.

“We’ve used it on tour as a monitor desk, and as a front of house desk on smaller shows. Tonight we’ve got it set up under my DJ rack. I can walk around the room before the show, EQ and time-align the speakers, and check the sound from anywhere in the venue. It allows me to do all the things I can do on a larger scale with a larger system.”

Jason Stiegler dialing things in on his Mackie DL32R via an iPad.

He also calls out another facet of the DL32R: “The ability to use it not just as a mixer but as a multi-track recorder, to take those recordings and load them into your favorite DAW, is something you just can’t do with most mixers.”

Traveling Light While Getting Results
Canadian hard rock band Kobra and the Lotus just finished a 35-date tour of Europe that saw the 5-piece group visit 18 countries. Helping the band travel lightly on the road was a Midas M32C digital rack mixer and DL32 stage box handling in-ear monitor mixing.

Production manager Andrew Peters, who also recently completed a stint of shows in the U.S. with metal band DragonForce, also made use of the M32C, stating, “Ease of transportation is the major selling point for me and the bands I work with, so this is the ultimate mixing system.”

Lead singer Kobra Paige utilizing the app to adjust her own monitor mix on the Midas M32C.


Lead singer Kobra Paige adds, “The result for us has been incredible; this is the first time we’ve been able to get hands-on with our in-ear mixes and take full control of the show.” Inputs and outputs were run via the DL32, with an AES50 port from the stage box feeding the M32C and a router connected via Ethernet, allowing for internet connectivity to the unit. Each member of the band then used the M32 Edit App to adjust their own mixes.

“As we travel light, I make use of each venue’s front of house console,” Peters notes. “The highlight has been mixing on the flagship Midas PRO X console at Backstage Munchen in Germany. Also, getting to mix on the M32 at Yo-Talo in Helsinki was sweet, especially to have our entire sound run on the Midas M Series.”

Comfortable With A New Acquaintance
Front of house engineer Tomas Wolfe utilized a Roland Pro AV M-5000 OHRCA console on both the U.S. and European legs of the recent tour by The Neighbourhood.

Wolfe, a native of Los Angeles, worked his way up from the bottom in live audio, with two years on the area’s club circuit leading to touring with a series of artists that includes BØRNS, Belly, Everlast, and the Mowgli’s. The stint with The Neighbourhood marked the first time for Wolfe on tour with the Roland console.

Tomas Wolfe touring (with) The Neighbourhood, joined by his Roland Pro AV M-5000.

“I’d read a bit about the M-5000,” he recalls, “so I went to the Roland offices in L.A. and checked it out, and ended up doing a couple of shows with it in L.A. I found that I really liked the sound and the flexibility of the workflow. It’s very customizable to my needs. The user layers and the user-defined sections are just that – designed for the user to configure it, so I can set up any show for the best way for me to work. Anywhere I want to go on the console is no more than a click or two away.”

Wolfe adds that the M-5000 is sonically transparent. “What you put in is what comes out,” he says. “There’s no inherent coloration to the sound. The onboard EQ and dynamics are great. I’m a huge fan of the sound and smoothness of the dynamic EQ, and the multiband compressor. Then there are the onboard effects. I was a huge fan of the classic Roland [RE-201] Space Echo and I grew up on the SDE-3000 reverb and delay, and it’s so great to have all of them and more on the console.”