Front of house engineer Barak Koren (Ilse DeLange, Mell & Vintage Future, Marco Borsato) delivered mixes for the recent stadium tour by Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave with Waves plugins running via a Waves SoundGrid Rack on his Avid VENUE | S6L console.
“I’ve been using Waves plugins for the last 15 years and plugins play a major role in my sound,” says Koren. “I found that the Avid S6L’s sound and workflow, combined with Waves plugins integrated in the — operating system/surface is very impressive and easy to access.”
The SoundGrid Rack for Venue enables mix engineers to run Waves plugins directly within VENUE | S6L consoles, with tactile control from the desk’s surface knobs in loading up up to eight SoundGrid-compatible plugins per instance. All standard VENUE plugin features apply, including Config and Show modes, delay compensation, snapshot automation, and detailed tactile control of plugin parameters.
Koren continues, “I find that using the Waves SoundGrid Rack for Venue software enabling Waves plugins to run integrally on the S6L mixer/console, adds a wide selection of tools and colors to my mix that I cannot get when working with any other mixer. The ability to control, save, manage and automate the plugins/chains/racks within the mixer’s OS is a huge benefit.”
Koren’s setup is based on VENUE S6L 32-fader surface joined by SoundGrid Rack for Venue as well as two Extreme SoundGrid Servers and additional outboards that include an API 2500, two dbx 160As, two Empirical labs EL8 X Distressors, a Yamaha SPX 2000, LEX480L, an Eventide H3000 and a Lake LM44.
Meanwhile, on the plugin side, he explains, “I find that the Primary Source Expander (PSE) is a perfect tool for mixing live sound. It reduces stage bleed and sensitivity to feedback when a mic is idle by automatically lowering mic levels between musical phrases. PSE is a smart, handy tool that I use to treat quiet instruments on loud stages. I use the F6 Floating-Band Dynamic EQ and the C6 Multiband Compressor on vocals and acoustic instruments. Inserting these two plugins helps me maintain tonality and a dynamic range, without the need to ‘filter out’ by using EQ. I use the DeEsser and Sibilance plugins on vocals. They assist me to maintain high-frequency content without the need to take it out of the PA system, since all PA systems tend to push the high end in order to maintain HF over distance. I find the latter to be unnatural on vocals, and therefore use these two plugins to control HF content.
“I use the H-EQ Hybrid Equalizer on almost all instruments. It sounds amazing and gives me the option to toggle between creative and corrective equalizing. Another favorite is the Scheps Omni Channel. I mainly use the preamp section (thump/saturation) in order to get an analog feel/punch/distortion. I also find the Gate/Expander to be a very powerful tool as well as its DS2 section.
“For compression, my choices are the PuigChild Compressor and the CLA76. H-Delay Hybrid Delay and the Manny Marroquin Delay are two delays that make the instruments ‘move’ in the mix. The dbx 160 Compressor/Limiter is my go-to bus compressor. It’s just a fast and great sounding compressor. The threshold control, in combination with its mix control, makes it quick and easy to find the right setting on a bus. And of course, the Scheps Parallel Particles for synth/electronics and when you look for something but don’t know what… It sparks up creativity and offers unpredictable solutions.”
