Front of house engineer Tayfun Oksuz chose a Waves eMotion LV1 live mixer in his work in support of performances at the recent Istanbul (Turkey) Conquest Day celebrations, which customarily involve spectacular audio and lighting productions on a grand scale.
I’m used to working with plugins in live events, so when I heard that eMotion LV1 was a very natural platform for running Waves plugins live, I immediately wanted to check it out,” Oksuz explains. “When I did, I was hugely impressed with the mixer’s pristine sound quality as well. In this specific show, my FOH position was 40 meters away from the PA, and I could distinctly hear every single detail of my mix.”
Oksuz’s setup includes a 24-inch touchscreen, a Waves FIT Controller for tactile control of eMotion LV1, an Axis One Waves-optimized computer, a Waves SoundGrid Extreme Server-C, a DSPRO StageGrid 1000 interface at FOH position connected via two CAT7 STP (as a redundant connection, utilizing LAG feature in the managed switch) and two DSPRO StageGrid 4000 stage boxes at the stage plugged into 24 L-Acoustics KUDO tops and 16 SB28 subwoofers.
“For this massive show,” Oksuz says, “I used all of the LV1’s 64 stereo channels. This complex production started with various speeches and continued with two different orchestras: the Mehtran Bolugu Turkish Ancient Army Orchestra, which has a 2100-year history and utilizes a wide assortment of musical instruments, both ancient and modern – from Turkish Iron Age percussion, to the ancient Persian Kus (a massive war drum, originally elephant-mounted, that produces 50Hz notes and below), to modern trumpets and cymbals accompanying a choir; and a symphonic orchestra led by famous Turkish composer/producer Iskender Paydas; plus drums, electric bass, guitar, a lead singer, a choir, and additional pre-recorded tracks triggered from Pro Tools. All the live music, speeches, video sounds and jingles were mixed on the LV1 for the PA, and then sent to the broadcast mixer (two channels) from the LV1’s matrix-out, and the broadcast stream used the same mix.
“The Waves plugins integrated within the eMotion LV1 were essential to mixing all these immensely diverse elements,” he continuess. “My favorites are the H-EQ Hybrid Equalizer, Torque, the F6 Floating-Band Dynamic EQ, Bass Rider, Vocal Rider and the S1 Stereo Imager. Other must-have plugins include the NLS Non-Linear Summer, which I had on all 64 channels and all 24 subgroups, utilizing the different characteristics of each of the plugin’s mix-preamps. And I always use Smack Attack and V-EQ4 on kick, snare and toms. These two plugins enable me to attain the genuine acoustic tones of the drums and percussion by using minor tweaking.
“The LV1 is made with the convenience of an engineer’s workflow in mind,” Oksuz concludes. “Any auxiliary tool you are looking for is in front of you – just plug and play. It’s super-flexible: you can do your job on one screen if you want, or you can set up four screens and see the page you want on each screen – a snapshot on one screen, Mixer 1 on another screen, etc. I also like how I can divide my whole mix into eight custom layers, and the availability of user-assignable keys for saving sessions and loading the session flip a/b channel – this procedure is incredibly fast and very useful. Also, I record all my concerts, and at the same time I perform a virtual soundcheck, which speeds up my work significantly. Furthermore, I can comfortably use the fingers of both my hands on the screens simultaneously.”
