Front-of-house and monitor engineer Cooper Davis (The Regrettes, No Vacation, The Happy Fits) is employing a Waves eMotion LV1 live mixer and Waves plugins for the ongoing world tour by American singer-songwriter Gus Dapperton.
“Superb sound!” Davis says of the LV1. “This is a club tour carrying audio and lights in a single trailer, so the audio package had to be compact, yet powerful. And this LV1 is definitely powerful.
“Another advantage of using the LV1 mixer is the ease of use and its advanced engine. Operating the LV1 is quick and effective. The console is very user-friendly and the layout is customizable. Working on the console is like a free-flowing movement of listening, decision making and executing. Furthermore, the ability to scale the size of the system up or down depending on the needs of the show really adds extra value.”
Cooper, who is handling both FOH and monitors for the tour, is employing an LV1 64, which offers 64 stereo channels housed in an OCD-Labs LITEFLY surface case, holding a Waves FIT Controller and a single Dell 24-inch touchscreen plus an additional touchscreen for quick access to floating plugins. His main server is a Waves Extreme-C SoundGrid Server with an extra one for redundancy, plus a One-C SoundGrid Server for “offloading some DSP of my FX processing” he adds. “I also have a few analog pieces I have been collecting in my FOH rack that I use via inserts within the LV1.”
Waves plugins integrated within the LV1 interface also play a big part in Cooper’s workflow. “My top Waves plugin is the F6 floating-band dynamic EQ and then the API 2500 compressor, PSE (Primary Source Expander), SSL E-Channel strip, the CLA-76 compressor/limiter and the CLA-2A compressor/limiter. The F6 is a workhouse plugin and my go-to EQ. It’s set as the default EQ on all my input strips. The dynamic features of this plugin grant it exceptional power and enable me to resolve a wide range of issues.
“In this production my primary challenge has been achieving a harmonious balance of tonality in Gus’s voice throughout his wide vocal range,” he continues. “His voice exhibits varying harmonic characteristics, depending on the specific range he’s performing in throughout the show. That’s where the F6 comes in. This dynamic EQ has been the solution to balancing these different tonalities from song to song. After using the F6 static EQ on my main vocal channel, I apply dynamic processing to balance the tonality across the vocalist’s entire range. My final vocal snapshot group is scoped for recall with some more subtle EQ changes, tailored to each song, ensuring the vocal tonality remains consistent. Automating key parts of the song is crucial for quickly reaching the desired starting point at the beginning of each track.”
Describing his monitor setup, Cooper notes, “On stage, the Dapperton tour includes a DSPRO StageGrid 4000 and a DiGiGrid IOX. The total IO count from stage is 44 Inputs and 22 outs. I use NETGEAR GS110TP switches on each end of the snake. The GS110s are running a fiber lag configuration offering redundant fiber lines from stage switch to FOH switch. I also have a Midas M32C with a Waves DN32-WSG Card installed, and that acts as a headless rack mixer for the band’s IEMs. All inputs are patched device-to-device from my SoundGrid IO into the M32C input channels. Then, the mixes are patched back out device-to-device to the stage IO to drive the IEMs. It’s a very sleek way of integrating a small rack mixer monitor console.”
