ORANGE BEACH, AL — FOH engineer Brett Orrison (Widespread Panic, The Black Angels, Percy Sledge, Nevilles Forever, Dear Jerry/Jerry Garcia Tribute) chooses to use Waves Audio plugins, Waves MultiRack, and Waves SoundGrid technology when touring with Widespread Panic. The mix is done on a DiGiCo console with integrated Waves MultiRack and Waves SoundGrid DSP servers. The recording is done via a DiGiGrid MGB interface that gets the multichannel 96 kHz MADI stream via Ethernet to the recording PC.
More details from Waves (www.waves.com):
Orrison notes, “Every Widespread Panic concert is streamed live and available for purchase the day after the show – which means that every night I’m mixing a live show, a live stream, and a recording, all at the same time, and both the stream and the mix-for-purchase must be studio-quality! Waves lets me to do all this by bringing studio tools into my live console. I use Waves plugins to get some classic sounds, including tape saturation, stereo imaging and rich compression. I use the Waves SSL G-Master Buss Compressor to get some nice tones out of the drums and vocals. I really enjoy this compressor a lot. Additionally, the Waves S1 Stereo Imager is a great tool for placing things in the stereo field. This makes it easier to hear all the instruments, all of the time. Widespread Panic is a complex band with a lot going on, so getting the stereo keys such as the properly-mixed Leslie speaker and the piano a little wider goes a long way towards making the mix clearer. The Kramer Master Tape is one of my favorite Waves plugins, and I use it to saturate the keyboard just enough, to rub out that ‘keyboard’ sound. The Waves DeEsser on vocals is a mainstay for me since I can grab unwanted frequencies only when they appear, without having to use an EQ. The lead vocal chain has two DeEssers and the SSL G- Master Buss Compressor.”
Orrison concludes, “Waves has bridged the gap between the studio and the live show. I can now achieve lots of studio tricks and tones in the live environment that were not possible when I first started mixing.”
For more information, please visit www.waves.com/ and www.waveslive.com/.
