Early Adopter
While it may have taken her longer than most who do so to go wireless for vocals, McLachlan is one of the truly early-adopting pioneers among users of in-ear monitors.
Unofficial tour historian Pallett tells this chapter of her story best: “We originally started using ears onstage with her alone,” he relates.
“It was the old wireless radio station stuff, and it sounded really bad. I remember paying $11,000 for a pair of used systems, and when I turned them on and listened I nearly choked.”
“The noise floor was horrendous. Sarah was using earbuds from a Sony Walkman. This was like 1994. Peter Gabriel did that and it was the talk of the town, so the rest of us had to do it too.”
McLachlan continues to evolve with the technology, however, and today as we all stand on the precipice of the 2011 summer touring season, Pallett has turned the entire stage over to IEM, using Sennheiser 2000 Series technology and custom molds from Sensaphonics.
Pallett subscribes to the philosophy that if one wants to do in-ears properly, they have to eliminate stage volume.
In his view as a monitor enginer, that means putting amplifiers into iso-boxes and having everyone else onboard with their own ears first, then building relatively full mixes for each musician.
“For me this is the greatest of situations, because now I get to actually mix, not just make something louder than something else,” he explains.
“Pretty much everyone in the band is getting a full mix with just a little more of me, and that’s how I feel it should be. Once we get rolling not a lot changes. We sound check every day, but we’re able to just blast through it.”
“There’s no need to pick at every little thing, it’s consistent dayto- day, and the musicians stay happy.”
No-Nonsense
Keeping the crowds just as happy on the other side of the proscenium arch, house sound emanates from a Meyer Sound rig assembled from inventory owned by Montreal, Quebec-based Solotech.
In total, a dozen Meyer MICA cabinets are hung per side in the tour’s standard theatre configuration, supplemented by a pair of horn-loaded, long-throw MSL-4 cabinets and two 700-HP subwoofers per side, plus four compact UPJ-1P VariO cabinets used as front fill.