Stones - Super Bowl

[allaccess]

Steve-

You are right on with the soloing and mono listening, and great idea to have the b'cast in another speaker to keep track of everything else (tho it would suck if it had the up/down delay!). Did a gig where the engineer soloed the snare and the console was in the wrong mode, so millions heard him sweeping freq's over the air for almost a minute! Another where a mic crapped out and was blazing loud while engineer soloed something else...

What many do not consider in this Super Bowl case is that the engineer in the audio truck of an event like this is not always in charge of the audience portion of the mix. more often than not, they mix only the band, and then that mix goes to the video or satellite truck for integration (mixing the other mixers) where they add in the audience (and always too much!) and stomp all over your mix with some kind of crappy compressor. Since the half time show is minutes of the whole deal, the band mixer wouldn't get much respect if he tries to yell at the dude pushing the audience to create some excitement! It's a sports show, so they mix the crowd way up... The producers of TV have a simple motto when it comes to audio. See it, hear it, and they wouldn't know if it sounded good anyway, what with all the crap going on in the video truck on the intercom, and calling shots while listening on Minimus 7's....

9 times out of 8, the soundcheck levels have nothing to do with show levels, and with a "vibe" band like the stones, you'd never get the same performance or energy twice anyway!

This kind of show is a crappy gig more often than not, especially when you have to put together that much crap in 6 minutes (a buddy was an A2 on the field for this show...).

Ryan Hewitt

on the road since age 13...

[Remoteness]

Ryan, you brought up a good point about the audience mix…

When I do music mixes for broadcast, I always address this issue up front. I inquire if we can mix the audience within our music mix feed (only) when the music portion is up to bat. IMO, it makes for better music audio…

We place our audience mics where they sound the best; we blend them in at the right balance related to what our musical ears pay attention to. It’s a win win situation for all. When applicable, I also take a feed from their audience or FX mics and rebalance them to suit our needs, especially if the director is going to cut to close ups of the audience. Those camera mics can work well but, I want to blend them into my mix. I want what most folks a home want – I need to hear what I’m looking at.

I believe the band’s representatives should also be sitting in the truck or control room that mixes all the various audio feeds. This way a better grasp of what’s going down with regard to the music mix is right there for them to concentrate on.