Since 1983, guitarist Dave Mustaine and gang have continued to keep thrash metal relevant, and here they are again out in support of their latest album, Dystopia. Bradley Johnson of KRF Audio, based in Newport, WA, is once again at the DiGiCo D5 on FOH with Dave Rupsch again handling monitor duties on a DiGiCo SD8. As these engineers were fans of the band when they were teens, it is a great gig for both — professionally and personally. “They are playing new songs from their new album, which, incidentally, is quite good,” Johnson says. “Also there are two new players in the band — Kiko Loureiro on guitar and Chris Adler on drums. They are both scary good!”
The first North American leg of the 2016 world tour kicked off Feb. 20, 2016 at Dallas’ South Side Ballroom and wrapped up on March 24 at the Videotron Centre in Quebec. A second leg starts April 28 at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, followed by a month of American dates ending at San Antonio’s River City Rockfest on May 29. From there, the boys head off to Europe, beginning with the Gods of Metal Festival in Milan, and that jaunt is followed by a South American tour which concludes Aug. 22 in Buenos Aires. Clearly these guys are ready to rock.
Metal, with Timecode
This tour is different, with timecode linking audio, lighting and video. “Since it’s passing through anyway, I now use it to trigger different things on my console,” Johnson says. “I have never done this before, but it is proving to be both fascinating and helpful. I’m sure the ‘Broadway Gang’ is laughing at me right now!” he says.
“This tour does have a lot of synchronization within the different production elements of the show,” Rupsch confirms. FOH, monitors, lights, video, and guitar patches are all linked to LTC timecode fired from a JoeCo BBR-1. “During the performance there are a good deal of click cues, position movements, and effects, so taking advantage of the timecode and programming has been a good deal of fun and a great way to take advantage of the DiGiCo console’s advanced features.” Rupsch adds that the set is great looking, and they’ve upped the ante with an amazing light show.
But we’re not here to talk about no stinkin’ light show.
The View from FOH
Johnson hails from the Portland, OR area and got interested in mixing by playing around audio as a kid. “I spent quite a bit of time taking apart old radios for their speakers,” he says. He would build his own “Frankenstein” arrays out of clock radio drivers and bolt them to the ceiling. When he graduated from high school, he moved to L.A. and got a job building studio monitors at Westlake Audio. “This is where I learned about things like impedance loads and horn patterns,” he says. “I also learned that the three-inch line arrays I built in sixth grade where more decorative than practical!”
He parlayed that day gig experience into working in live sound. “It was the 1980s, so everyone in L.A. was in a band,” Johnson laughs. Mixing in area clubs was “an amazing learning experience and quite a spectacle in those days.” He soon went out on tours. For 10 years he somehow managed to hang on to an audio gig with Aerosmith, for which we can all agree he should get some kind of medal. Other acts he mixed for include Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe, Lenny Kravitz, Leonard Cohen, The Pretenders, Chicago, Rob Thomas, Tool and Crowded House. Since 2013, he’s been with Megadeth.
Johnson started out on analog boards and confesses that the move to digital was challenging, especially “when it was in its infancy and we all cowered at the stories told of the infamous Showco Show consoles turning on its operators and killing them with some kind of disintegrator ray.” That urban legend aside, he kept at it, trying every digital board he could get his hands on until coming upon the DiGiCo D5. He loved it so much he bought one. Pretty ballsy, as the board cost more than his house was worth. “It was scary, but it made me a much better engineer.” Since then, he’s added an SD 10/24 and a pair of SD8s to it, “so I guess you can say I like DiGiCos!”
The band is not carrying a P.A. on this tour. “To carry a P.A., the band really needs to just be playing arenas and sheds,” he points out. “We are doing those, but also clubs, festivals and everything in between.” So they are relying on regional sound companies, who have “come a long way in recent years — now it is more common to get decent gear than not. My biggest issue — even with a great P.A. — is there are many ways to deploy it. When using house or a locally rented P.A., we usually do not have a lot of time to make changes to whatever the configuration might be. So my biggest challenge is dealing with the occasional ‘sinker’ P.A.,” he laughs. On the flip side, both engineers are getting to hear different gear, which will help them make sound judgments the next time they are in a position to take out a black box.
On the topic of plug-ins, “I use nothing really ‘on board’ the desk, aside from channel EQ and a few dynamics. Everything else is all boxes, and I am comfortable with jamming them into three 12-space racks.” He says it’s the “typical” potpourri of outboard gear, include Eventide, TC Electronic, Empirical Labs and BSS products common on the road, and it “leaves nothing on the table from my perspective.” All well and good for North America, but as it’s expensive to freight it over the pond to Europe, a “B” rig will be made up with the DiGiCo SD10/24 with Waves Server for FOH and a DiGiCo SD8/24 for monitors, sharing a digital stage box. As there is no external rack to speak of in that situation, Johnson has had to warm up quickly to plugins. “The first thing I did was to duplicate my Waves Maxx BCL hardware that I have in my D5 rig with the appropriate plug-ins. I use the dbx 160 and Doubler to replace my Eventide. But the one that has really been helpful is the [Waves] Butch Vig Vocals. I really like the fact that I can add distortion in controlled amounts.”
Microphone Selections
Mic-wise, it’s Shure for the win on the drums. There are Shure Beta 98s on the toms, a 181 on the hi-hat, Beta 91s on the kicks and a 98 on the ride. One exception here is they are using AKG C414’s for overheads. “For this type of music, I really like internals, but we haven’t gotten that far yet aside for our prized Kelly SHU plates for the kicks.” The vocals are, of course, SM58s. Both guitarists are using Fractal Audio Systems with power amps running into Marshall 4x12s that are built into the set. Then there are direct lines out of the Fractals, though for Johnson, they do not have quite the “crunch” of a speaker with a mic in front of it. “The problem is that our stage set is made up of large metal boxes with non blow-through video panels directly in front of the 4x12s, so miking the speakers is out of the question. My best description of what it sounds like would be using an eight-yard metal dumpster as a isolation tank with a 4×12 on one side and a bass cab on the other. Enter the Radial JDX, problem solved. Canadian science at its best!”
Johnson says the biggest challenge night after night is getting a low-level vocal over a metal band. “This is an extremely tricky balancing act especially with a microphone with a considerably wide pattern.” Interestingly, Johnson uses a Mac laptop and a Waves DiGiGrid MGB adapter to record each show. He relies on these recordings for editing snapshots fired via SMPTE timecode.
Monitor World
Rupsch, based in Phoenix, grew up in the Chicago suburb of Algonquin and got into all things audio while attending Jacobs High School. Friends put a band together, and he became the de facto sound guy. “We got our first sound console, a Mackie 1202, and I instantly fell in love with audio,” he recalls. “That little board is still at my house, and I use it to this day.” At Missouri State College in Springfield, he got a gig at the venue that hosts the national tours coming through. In 2001, he received his first tour offer, and after graduating, went out with The Phunk Junkeez. “I have been loving my job ever since.” His first eight years in the biz were spent at FOH, but in 2009 he went into monitor world. Acts he’s mixed for include My Chemical Romance, Katy Perry, fun., B52s, Sum 41, Panic! At the Disco and the All-American Rejects. In 2012 he started doing FOH for Megadeth, and then moved to monitors when that position opened up. “Both ends of the snake are fun positions, but if I had to pick one, I would choose monitors. It is very rewarding to develop an environment of trust and productivity with such talented musicians.”
Of his SD8, “I really enjoy many of its features,” Rupsch says. “In addition to sounding fantastic, its snapshots and macros are highly programmable. I love using snapshots and auto update on a select variety of scoped parameters while still keeping the mix very fluid to adjust to the spontaneity that makes us love live music. The DiGiCo UB-MADI 48 channel USB interface and Reaper DAW is also an integral part of my setup. It is so useful to be able to play back previous performances and fine-tune things like key filters on noise gates or audition different presets to something you feel you can improve on.”
The band is all IEMs, but not the same one. Rupsch himself has the Jerry Harvey Audio JH-16s. Mustaine is also on those, while David Ellefson is on Westone; Adler is on Starkeys; and Loureiro is on Ultimate Ears UE-18s. These are also supplemented with sidefills. There are d&b Q7s for the tops (two per side) and d&b Q subs (three per side). “For a heavy metal show, the side fill volume is somewhat modest,” he points out. “These are used to simply fill out the stage volume and create a nice, even sound on stage. We start sound check with the house P.A. off and the band and I walk the stage adjusting guitar/bass cabinet volumes. We then turn on side fills on, obtain a nice ratio of kick, snare, hats, bass guitar and top it off with some guitar. The guitar I feed into the fills comes via the Radial JDX straight from guitar amp head. Guitar levels in fills are set in a way so that no single guitar source sticks out of place anywhere on the stage. The Q7’s are set just upstage of the vocal mic line as well as to avoid contaminating the vocal mic with any unnecessary stage bleed.”
The latest addition to his toolbox is Lockstep, a software program that converts the incoming longitudinal timecode from the JoeCo to MIDI timecode. From his computer, a USB MIDI cable outputs the MTC to the DiGiCo. “Another program I have been using lately is called TouchOSC, which lets you use your iPad as a MIDI control surface. On my iPad, I have made templates that send MIDI data to fire corresponding macros/snapshots on the console. The advantage to this is when I am using a console other than a DiGiCo, I have a consistent control surface to do the same things on an Avid Profile, Yamaha PM5D or CL5. Also the iPad interface lets you make nice big, bright buttons, which is helpful if you want to avoid ‘fat-finger syndrome!’”
Rupsch says that the audio on this tour is set up to be smooth. FOH and monitors share a stage rack via MADI BNC (with monitors having control of head amps). “Our stage rack patch is completely concealed and is as clean as possible.” The on-stage side of the rack has four Whirlwind W1 connectors. The off-stage side has a W2 output to IEM rack, BNCs and two analog talkback mic inputs. “It’s a perfect setup.” He is also putting to use something he calls Pro Focus. “With my in-ears in, I solo an input with EQ / dynamics bypassed. I move this inputs mic around and can find that sweet spot quickly. This is a huge advantage with loud inputs like snare drums, hi-hats and guitar cabinets; you have hearing protection in close proximity to loud inputs while still being able to hear exactly what the mic hears. It is astounding what an inch or two can do to a guitar tone.”
For Rupsch, the biggest challenge is providing the band members with a consistent experience. “These veterans know exactly what they want. From my first day here at monitors, we have always gotten along very well and have very similar ideas on the way things should sound and react with each other. It has also helped a great deal that I grew up listening to Megadeth in high school, listening to their earlier albums countless times.” Rupsch is having a good time just wondering what his 14-year-old self would think of what he’s getting paid to do, and by whom. “I had a Megadeth poster in my high school locker in and was flattered to get to work with them. The time I have spent with this band has been a rewarding experience, and I am proud of the relationship we have developed these past few years.”
“My favorite part of all of this is that I live on a bus with some of my best friends in the world,” Johnson says, adding with a grin: “Then I get to listen to music every night that I loved as an angry young guitar player way back in the day.”
Megadeth 2016 World Tour
AUDIO CREW
- Soundco: Locally supplied racks and stacks
- FOH Engineer: Brad Johnson
- Monitor Engineer: Dave Rupsch
- Guitar Tech: Willie Gee
- Bass Tech: Fred Kowalo
- Drum Tech: Tony Laureano
FOH GEAR
- Console: DiGiCo D5
- Outboard: TC Electronic 6k, (2) Empirical Labs Distressors. BSS 901, Eventide Eclipse, TC Electronic VoiceLive, TC Electronic Fireworx, TC Electronic Reverb 4k, RME MADI to AES, Alesis DM Pro drum module, SPL Transient Designer, dbx 120x, Waves Maxx BCL, Waves Wave Server
MONITOR GEAR
- Monitor Console: DiGiCo SD8
- Sidefills: d&b audiotechnik Q7s (two per side), d&b Q Subs (three per side)
- IEM Earpieces: Jerry Harvey Audio JH-16s, Westone, Starkeys, Ultimate Ears UE-18s
- IEM System: Sennheiser EW300
- Recording/Playback: JoeCo BBR-1, Reaper DAW, DiGiCo UB-MADI 48-channel USB interface
- Microphones: Shure SM58s, Beta 98s, 181, Beta 91s. AKG C414s
- Direct Boxes: Radial JDX
