Back in January 2015, FOH engineer Chris Aman answered the door of his Thompsons Station, TN home. Sound Image had delivered an Avid VENUE Profile console so he could start building the show for his newest client, Pentatonix. After winning the third season of NBC’s The Sing Off in 2011, the five-member a cappella group continued growing in popularity and was now going out on its biggest tour yet. And Aman suddenly realized what he was up against.
“Their recording was so big and wide. I was wondering how I was going to take five mono inputs and create a stereo image worthy of what they do,” he says. “I had to rely on a lot of trial and error, a lot of plug-ins, and a completely different approach to what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years to create the pop show they wanted it to be.”
One Sunday in April, FOH stopped by their St. Louis tour stop at the Chavitz Arena, a venue whose shell had just swallowed the sounds of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band a few weeks before. The sonic depth was worthy of that or any other band, due to a combination of an amazingly talented singers and a guy at the sound console who in essence was “just” moonlighting from his day gig (he’s also the Pentatonix’ production manager).
Aman grew up in the Alberta farming community of Medicine Hat. One Christmas, when he was eight, his grandmother gave him a drum set that she had found found at an auction. Aman played in a punk band in high school, and he was the one setting up sound for his band. That evolved into doing it for others, and then some. “At 19, I saw that there was no production company in my hometown, and so I started Yaddles Pro Sound,” he says. Within a short time his company would merge with one in Edmonton, and he moved there. Next, he hooked up with Canadian band April Wine, and went out on the road mixing their monitors for three years. He has worked with a variety of bands since then, including OneRepublic, Nick Jonas, Dispatch and Demi Lovato. He sometimes does double duty as production manager/FOH engineer, and when he got off the Lovato tour, he swore he would “never do both again!” Yet he answered the call to do just that for Pentatonix.
The System
For the band’s 2016 World Tour, Sound Image’s Nashville facility is supplying the entire audio rig, including the L-Acoustics K2 system, which Aman first mixed on last year with The Dispatch.
Typically, the array features 14 K2 large-format line arrays per side flanked by outfills of nine Kara enclosures. Four additional Karas are scattered out across the deck as front fills, and there are a dozen SB28 double-18 subs, which are put to impressive use by both the band and the guy at the knobs (more on this in a minute). Six LA-Raks loaded with three LA8 amplified controllers power it all up.
System engineer/crew chief Dave Shatto is currently in his fifth season of pro touring. While studying Audio Engineering and Music Business at Nashville’s Belmont University, he did local stagehand work with Crew 1. It was “Load-in, go to class, then load-out at night,” he says. After graduating in December 2010, he was hired by Sound Image and was put out on a tour a few months later.
Doing the Pentatonix tour involves a lot of variety. “We play a lot of different types of venues,” Shatto says. “When you’re playing an A-level arena one day, a shed the next, then a theatre after that, you need to constantly be changing your deployment approach. Luckily, the K2 box allows you to adapt to different venues because of its low box dimensions and weight. “I never felt restricted by weights or trim on this run,” Shatto continues, adding that he “figured box counts based on the geometry of the room, not the capacity of the steel.”
Along with its relatively light weight, Shatto credits the K2 loudspeakers for the trapezoid design of the box, which allows for “10 degrees of inter-box angle. With the K2 rigging, I was allowed to cover the back wall to the barricade with a single source. The K2 waveguide fins also allowed us to control the horizontal energy away from unneeded areas and reinforce where it was needed.
“This year, we decided to change my Kara side hang to K2,” Shatto adds, noting that it allows him to “voice more consistently between hangs” and adds flexibility in larger rooms. “For example, in Comerica Theatre in Phoenix, the room is not incredibly wide. But due to the K2’s 110 degrees of horizontal dispersion, I was able to take four boxes from my side hang and tag them onto my mains for a 20-box hang. The K2 is phenomenal in terms of its flexibility on tours of this nature.”
Shatto uses Soundvision software to model the room. “I always joke that my entire day hinges upon the hour before load-in because of that software. So I’d build the room and determine inter-box angles in the software and do preliminary zone shading and EQ as well.” He uses Rational Acoustics’ SMAART 7 for system tuning, although primarily for transfer functions. “Most DSP control was done in our LM-44s via Lake Controller software, he adds, with “L-Net used primarily for zone control and monitoring. Then I’d hand it over to Chris Aman.”
In the Mix
Regarding his FOH mixes, to make the five singers sound like a rock band and fill arenas with sounds up and down the entire spectrum, “there are a lot of plug-ins going on,” Aman says. It’s a matter of creating layers, he adds, and he’s doing it with mastering techniques. “All my signals are coming to me in mono signals, so I’ve done a lot of different things to create a stereo image. This is to make it wider, and push it all out to create that stereo image.” For this, he relies principally on the Waves Dynamic EQ plug-in, which in this case, he uses to expand, rather than compress, with great success.
The microphone choice for a group like this takes on added importance because, well, that’s all there is. Lead singers Scott Hoying (baritone), Mitch Grassi (tenor), and Kirstin Maldonado (mezzo soprano) are all wielding Shure KSM9s.
Bass singer Avi Kaplan is treated like a bass guitar, as he sonically pushes those subs more than one might expect (all the way down to a low A, which nicely snuggles the 55 Hz). After trial and error, they decided to use a Telefunken M81. For Aman, it was mostly about the rejection on the reverse side, because as Kaplan goes so low, gain needs to go up to get the volume needed. “And the crowd gets so loud. When you have 35,000 screaming girls, you really need a mic that can reject!” For Kaplan, Aman split his feed into two channels, one being a “bass” channel for the real low vocalizations with sufficient dynamic EQ that kept it stable to allow him to punch and hit those low thresholds without feedback.
But perhaps the biggest mic challenge was fitting “beatboxer” vocal percussionist Kevin Olusola. “We definitely tried a lot of different things, but it turned out the new Shure KSM8 works really well for singers who are cupping the mic, and with a beatboxer, it’s always being cupped,” Aman explains. “And it doesn’t sound that much different when it’s cupped, so it’s better for the engineer to produce the sound that [the singer] is going for.” Olusola is giving him many snare drum sounds to contend with. The challenge is getting the gain necessary for that aspect but also allow for him talking and singing, which he does nearly simultaneously. The threshold snare drum portion of his mix is at the 1k Hz to 5k Hz range, while the hi-hat has a tight cue at 10k Hz that allows his hi-hat sound to punch. “He’s like a sampler, with an arsenal of sounds, and we worked together to figure out what worked best for everything he’s capable of.” To keep it extra interesting, there’s a popular segment of the show where Olusola sits and plays cello while singing and beatboxing, all at the same time.
Meanwhile at Monitorworld
Mixing monitors and handling RF coordination is veteran Jason Bennett, who started with Showco in 1999 after a brief stint at Full Sail University. After 15 years of working for Clair/Showco, he made the decision to take the independent route a year ago, mixing for One Republic, The Wallflowers, Chris Botti, HateBreed and Night Ranger in addition to a very long list of bands as a Clair vendor.
Currently, Bennett is mixing on an Avid Profile and working entirely “within the box,” although the setup for Pentatonix is not heavy on plug-ins. “I’m a big believer in the garbage-in garbage-out attitude. If there is a problem with the way something sounds coming to me, I try my best to fix it at the source. That’s said, I use the Waves C-6 multiband compressor for all the vocals. It’s a big help in finding the cut through frequencies I use that are unique to each vocalist. I also use the Renaissance R-verb for separate reverbs on each of them.”
But his approach to mixing for an a cappella act is not really differ much from doing rock monitors. “It would be more so for FOH than monitors,” Bennett explains. “Since I am mixing for in-ears only [there are no wedges], I don’t have as much space to fill as he does. Essentially it’s just five lead singer mixes. That said, bass singer Avi Kaplan is a slightly different ballgame. His range is amazingly low. Being a classically trained opera singer, he’s very particular about his voice each night. He can hit a low A that registers around 55 Hz. Most in-ear monitors have a hard time reproducing that without disturbing the rest of the sound. It’s a fight to make it sound clear enough so he can be absolutely sure about his tone.”
Big, Small… They Play Them All
While the St. Louis show was in a 10,000-seat arena, the tour is also doing smaller houses, outside venues and theaters. “It’s changing every day, but there are certain ways to tune the P.A. because that I wouldn’t do normally,” Aman explains, “and I craft it all in a certain way during sound check so that when the show starts I’m just mixing the band.” Every night, though, his biggest challenge is getting that low frequency mixed in. “They all sing well and provide a good amount of gain, but the low frequency is especially challenging in an arena.” Aman typically mixes the show at around 95 dB level.
System engineer Shatto recalls a few of the more memorable (meaning “different”) venues on the tour so far. “We played a few theater-style, A-level arenas, where they turn the stage sideways and you play to the long side of the audience. We did two this year: Moda Center (Portland, OR) and the Frank Erwin Center in Austin. As I’m looking through my notes I wrote down the same thing on each day. ‘Get off the floor to tune.’ In both venues, they push back the lower seats, so you’re mixing up against a flat concrete wall with false seats around you. But once you get off the floor and up on the concrete bowl, you can really hear what the array is doing. Both are acoustically sound rooms, but I’m just not really a fan of these setups. High inclination and close FOH position puts your mixer a little too low in the array.”
Shatto also mentioned the U.C. Berkeley’s Greek Theater as another venue with an acoustical quirk to be aware of. “It’s a beautiful venue and a gorgeous view from the lawn. However, there is one point at center in the middle of the lower bowl where — due to the concave nature of the amphitheater — all reflection sources converge and create about a 10 dB spike! It’s only like a six-by-six foot area, but its right in the middle of the amphitheater. My favorite acoustical show of tour hands down was the Santa Barbara Bowl. That venue sounds great and always has. Easily my most consistent night from front to back, and what a view from the top!”
But even with all the work, there’s also a little fun along the way. On doing both production managing and mixing, Aman acknowledges that two very different skillsets are in use. “It’s a little bit weird going from one to the other,” he confesses. “At first you’re in office mode, walking the venue, making sure the views aren’t obstructed, doing paperwork, and all of that. Then you switch and get behind the console. It’s like my work day is done and the fun begins!”
Pentatonix World Tour 2016
Sound Company: Sound Image/Nashville
Audio Crew
- FOH Engineer: Chris Aman
- Monitor Engineer: Jason Bennett
- System Engineer/Crew Chief: Dave Shatto
- Production Manager: Chris Aman
- Monitor Tech: Marc Estrin
- P. A. Tech: Stephen Wharton
FOH Gear
- House Console: Avid VENUE Profile
- Key Plug-in: Waves Dynamic EQ
- Main P.A.: (28) L-Acoustics K2 (14/side) with (9) Kara outfills/side
- Front Fills: (4) L-Acoustics Kara
- Subs: (12) L-Acoustics SB28
- Amplification/Control: (6) L-Acoustics L-Raks (each with three LA8 amplified controllers).
Monitor Gear
- Monitor Console: Avid VENUE Profile
- Key Plug-ins: Waves C-6 Multiband Compressor, Renaissance R-verb
- Outboard: None
- Wedges: None
- IEM Hardware: Shure PSM 1000s
- IEM Earpieces: Jerry Harvey Audio JH-13v2
- Mics: Shure UR4D handhelds with Shure KSM9HS heads; Shure KSM8 head for vocal percussionist Kevin Olusola; Telefunken M81 for “bassist” Avi Kaplan.
About Pentatonix
Founded in 2011, Pentatonix is a five-member vocal ensemble consisting of lead vocalists Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi and Kirstin Maldonado; Avi Kaplan (bass); and vocal percussionist Kevin “K.O.” Olusola. The band has sold more than 2.8 million albums in the U.S. alone, won multiple Grammy Awards, sold out venues worldwide and amassed some 1.4 billion views on its YouTube channel. Pentatonix’ most recent holiday album That’s Christmas To Me, was certified double platinum by the RIAA and featured “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy,” the 2016 Grammy-winning track that went viral on the Internet. Their world tour launched in April with shows in Japan, followed by legs in North America (April 13-May 15), Europe (May 23-June 26) and Asia (Aug. 20-21). After that, they return for a North American leg that runs from Oct. 17-Nov. 22. –-George Petersen
