It’s easy to forget that recalling sounds, settings and mixes is a luxury that recording studios have only enjoyed since the early 1980s. Along with ‘unlimited’ tracks, studios generally take automation and recall for granted.

‘There are lots of instances where I’ll dial something up with hardware in the heat of the moment and fire off a little mix or do something – and later wish that we could get back to it,’ admits producer, engineer and musician David Kalmusky. ‘The Trident TSM console in my control room has no detents and so it was always hard to get anything more than an approximation for recall – until we started using SpectraFoo sound analysis software…

Green Day’s line-up of three front liners with a couple of guest musicians amounts to a modest 22 audio channels at FOH. But what the band ‘lacks’ in channel count is made up by extensive use of analogue outboard gear. At the helm is the band’s long-standing FOH engineer, Kevin Lemoine, who – supported by System Tech Clark Thomas – recently pitched up at the Estadio Velez Stadium in Argentina as part of a year-long tour covering Australia, Europe, South America, Canada and the US.

The PA used for the concert was a d&b audoitechnik SL-Series, GSL System supplied by one of Argentina’s largest rental firms, BALS Buenos Aires Live Shows. 

Transmission Festival Asia returned to Bangkok in March, unleashing a frenzy of EDM, mixed by world-renowned DJs and delivered with a Funktion-One sound system.

For more than a decade, United Music Group’s Transmission Festival series has delivered EDM spectaculars to a growing global audience. Each year, the team serves up a fresh edition of the event, which brings together an impressive roster of DJs to perform in a continuous chain of sets, thematically linked under a single narrative. This year’s event adopted the theme Spirit of the Warrior, a concept introduced and expanded throughout the night by specially created video content displayed on giant video screens. 

With ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘See Me, Feel Me’, The Who’s 1969 ‘rock opera’ Tommy has enjoyed remarkable longevity on record and in the band’s live repertoire, as well as through theatrical productions and a film directed by Ken Russell.

The musical component of the new production currently being staged at Colorado’s Denver Center saw director Sam Buntrock and sound designer Ken Travis searching for a new approach: ‘This is not to criticise some of the more recent stage productions, but we wanted to get away from a synth/keyboard-heavy sound and get back to guitars – in effect, to put The Who back on stage,’ says Travis. ‘We wanted an energy and a rawness that audiences would closely associate with The Who.’

CMT’s Nashville television series took to the stage as Nashville in Concert recently returned to the UK for a second run of sold-out arena shows following the success of 2017’s tour. Providing audio, video and lighting, Liverpool-based production company Adlib consolidated its relationship with the production crew from Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

Adlib again supplied an L-Acoustics system, typically comprising 16 K2 with 15 Kara boxes for the side hangs. These were accompanied by 16 groundstacked KS28 subs, set eight-a-side running in cardioid mode, plus Kara and ARCS for infill and lip-fill. Processing used a standard Adlib Lake rack, loaded with two Lake LM 44s and two LM 26s, with L-Acoustics’ Network Manager controlling L-Acoustics LA12X amps.