The Eagles’ current residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas (44 shows over 22 weekends) finds Tom Evans, who has sat FOH for the band on a Solid State Logic Live console for the past eight years, scrapping his old mixes and rebuilding them from scratch in response to the venue’s unique immersive audio system.
The Sphere incorporates nearly 1,600 matrix array speaker cabinets (a total of 167,000 speaker drivers, amplifiers and processing channels) that deliver immersive sound in the 18,000-capacity domed venue. For the Eagles’ residency, Evans used the 64 aux sends on his SSL Live L550 Plus console, with an L350 Plus running as backup, to send his mix to 42 zones in front of, behind, around and above the audience. ‘That meant that I could automate things song by song,’ he explains.
Evans previously used SSL’s Live console while working with Eagles drummer and singer, Don Henley. ‘The sound of the SSL is obviously the primary thing,’ he says. ‘But there’s a fair bit of automation of EQs, compressors and things, song to song, because you’re jumping backwards and forwards through the decades, so you need very different sounds and textures. It’s generally one snapshot per song. That’s the starting point, and then I mix.
‘Almost all of the inputs go to stems, and I automate the stems,’ he continues. ‘If I need to do a global EQ change on the snare drum, I do it on the input channel. If I need to do a specific song EQ on the snare drum, I do it on the snare stem. Stems also reduce the number of faders that I have to grab. I really like the stems – they’ve become integral to my workflow.
Evans has also been using a 12-fader SSL Live Remote Tile for the shows: ‘I added it when we started doing the Hotel California songs on tour, because I had more to deal with. I kept it for this residency because it was useful to have that extra, grabbable bank. It’s an easy place to get a handle on some of the outputs.’
The Sphere’s stage is set in front of a proscenium loudspeaker array more than 460 loudspeaker modules. To prepare for their residency, the band rehearsed for three weeks in a large soundstage in Los Angeles in front of a PA system supplied by long-time provider Clair Global. ‘The Clair crew tuned it and timed it to match as closely as they could what it would sound like onstage at the Sphere for the band,’ Evans reports. He set up his mix position in an adjacent soundstage where Clair recreated a small-scale replica of the Sphere’s 42 speaker cluster locations around him.
Prior to production rehearsals, Evans too a tour of the Sphere’s sound system with the in-house audio team, and mixed some recordings using the venue’s proprietary plug-in, which virtualises the immersive system into stereo speakers or headphones. ‘That gave me a sense of what worked well where,’ he says. He also attended a show during Dead & Company’s residency, and consulted the band’s sound crew, including FOH mixer Derek Featherstone, CEO of sound provider UltraSound. On a day off during rehearsals, he flew to Las Vegas to check his live mix recordings through the Sphere’s sound system.
On a typical Eagles show, Evans automates the seven vocal mics according to who is singing lead and who is singing backup. ‘[At the Sphere] the lead vocal is always straight down the middle,’ he says.
While the venue’s 360° immersive PA allows sources to be panned anywhere, he places the background vocals across the width of the proscenium speaker rig. ‘I didn’t go too wide with them, because The Eagles are so tight on their harmonies.’
For the song ‘In the City,’ which features a visual of an animated, rotating city block, ‘The camera pans up and Joe is at the top of the building. So, for the solo, I pan the guitar right to the top of the building [above the audience’s heads]. Then, with reverbs and other things, you can throw those behind the audience. ‘Desperado’ has those soft, slow strings, so those can also be really big, and some of the B3 parts can be a little wider, as can some of the swirly effects, like on Joe’s solo in ‘Rocky Mountain Way.’ But on the whole, there wasn’t a lot of stuff moving around as it wouldn’t have fitted the material.’
The Eagles have been performing so long that the songs practically mix themselves, Evans says: ‘My job is to not be noticed, and the SSL is perfect for that. The summation is so transparent and preserves the character of all the individual things that you’re putting into it, and that enables you to have that great separation. And using the console on a sound system like the Sphere’s, where the system itself is so separated, it’s even more so.’
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