Fifties-influenced Danish metal band Volbeat recently wrapped up a North American tour, supported by Halestorm and The Ghost Inside, and are now heading for Europe. Production manager/FOH engineer Denniel Miller is mixing the band on a DiGiCo Quantum852 console paired with Fourier Audio’s transform.engine in a control package tailored to give Volbeat the big sound they need onstage.
Volbeat are on the road supporting their ninth album, God Of Angels Trust, on The Greatest Of All Tours Worldwide.
When DiGiCo announced that the Oeksound Soothe Live plug-in was going to be offered in Fourier Audio’s transform.suite ’25 software bundle, it helped inspire him to make the switch back to the brand and its newest flagship desk. ‘I’m using Soothe to take the edge off of cymbals and guitars, among other things, and it’s an absolute cheat code.’
Beyond the bundle, Miller has also ported a number of other plug-ins to the Fourier Audio platform, including many from the FabFilter family. ‘I’ve wanted all of their plug-ins in the live world for so long,’ he admits. ‘On certain occasions in the past, I’ve had to reach for other tools that are similar to transform.engine, but much less stable, maybe just based on a laptop kind of solution so that I could grab a plug-in to achieve a unique vocal effect.
‘Having FabFilter plug-ins on Fourier has been huge for me, and I’m using them everywhere, from their time-based effects like Pro-R 1 and Timeless to their incredible Pro-Q 4 and Saturn. Being able to utilize these plug-ins in a live setting has been an absolute game-changer for me.’
Another plug-in that has remained from the Waves toolset for Miller is GTR Stomp, which is a lightweight plug-in stripped out of the GTR3 modeller that he uses as a spring reverb stompbox. ‘The spring reverb is only used during a couple of key moments in the show,’ he explains. ‘It’s definitely something that out of context sounds out of place, but in the context of the overall mix makes sense. A guitar player that I quite like once said, ‘There’s no such thing as bad tone; it’s just wrong tone.’ In this case, it’s the right tone.‘
The Quantum852 console has also been an indispensable addition to the current Volbeat tour. ‘DiGiCo is the console that I want when I don’t know what I’m walking into and I’ve got to roll with the punches,’ says Miller. ‘It is just so flexible, and it’s more versatile beyond just user-defined keys into all the I/O options and integration with other third parties. The Quantum852, having those capabilities at your fingertips, is definitely a step in the right direction as we’ve moved back to DiGiCo on this tour.’
‘One of my favourite features is just that the screens are bright enough to see them outdoors now,’ he continues. ‘I honestly didn’t notice at first. They looked great for the first few times as they started to appear on the 225 and 338. But then I got out into sheds on the US leg of this tour. I almost didn’t notice at first, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks that I can easily see the screens – they have plenty enough brightness in the daytime. No more cardboard sun shield…’
The desk is equipped with 128 Mustard Processing strips, which Miller was aware had been available on earlier Quantum consoles but had only used it a couple of times. When he received the Quantum852 to test it out for Volbeat, he pondered: “What am I going to do? Am I going to convert my old SD7 file and start from there, or do I just wing this from scratch?”’
He flipped everything to the Mustard Processing channels. ‘I’m using Mustard for everything,’ he says. ‘I built the Volbeat show with that and widely ignored the SD processing underneath it, and I was floored at how much less work I was doing to get to an incredible sounding product. I think the show now sounds better than it’s ever sounded, and I’m doing four to five times less processing to get there. Every step of the way there’s less path latency, there’s less mucking around with it.’
Miller notes that if some piece of outboard gear were to die in the rack, other than the transform.engine, the audience would not know anything happened because so much is now happening onboard the Quantum console.
‘There were times in the past where if I were to think, I need a compressor for a creative use, instead of a corrective use, I would have reached for something outboard,’ he says. ‘Now, with Mustard, there are great tools on the channel strip for creative compression, and it sounds great. The EQs sound great. Between DiGiCo and Fourier Audio, I no longer really need the outboard stuff. It’s huge – a Quantum leap. Credit to somebody, because I know that these tools aren’t brand new but, holy cow, they’re so much better than what I’ve had access to before.’
More: www.fourieraudio.com