SAN DIEGO – For their recent North and South American tour legs, The Pixies took along a sound system supplied by LMG Audio Systems with new Lake processing at its heart. Craig Mitchell, account executive for touring sales at LMG, credited the three Lake LM 26 Digital Audio Loudspeaker Processors for "flexibility and audio quality," and also noted ease of rigging as well.
"We had one week of preparation and a day of pre-production in Philadelphia to rig and test our d&b audiotechnik line-array system with full Lake processing," Mitchell said. "The three-week North American leg of the tour went without a hitch; the Lake LM 26 really shined through for us." The Pixies then went on to complete a series of stadium dates in South America.
"The three Lake processors connected the pair of Yamaha PM5DRH 40-channel digital consoles at front-of-house and monitors to the d&b amplifiers and cabinets," Mitchell noted. "We provided d&b J Series boxes – 12 per side – for the main left and right stacks. For subs we provided four J-SUB and four J-INFRA subwoofers per side. We also had two sets of 10 d&b Q Series out-fill boxes per side, four Q-10 cabinets as front fills, and a dozen d&b M4 in-stage monitor wedges. We used multiple M12 amplifiers to power the sophisticated d&b rig."
The first of three LM 26 processors handled signal processing and distribution for left and right line arrays; the second covered the left- and right-channel out-fills; the third was dedicated to front-fills and subwoofers.
"The LM 26 units are configured as two-channel In and two-channel analog/digital Out," noted LMG system technician Andy Vickery. "While the d&b power amplifiers provided adjustable crossover outputs for the individual PA speaker cabinets, we used the LM 26s to provide overall system EQ, full dynamics control for the various components, as well as individual and fully adjustable delay for the subwoofers and fills. The main connection was via the LM 26's AES digital outputs, with the analog ports as a redundant back-up – it's an easy-to-configure arrangement using an Apple wireless iPad from the auditorium using our VPN App."
"The programmable Raised Cosine Equalization, LimiterMax peak- and RMS-responding limiters are perfect for this application," Vickery added, "with smooth, unfussed response and the kind of surgical accuracy we need. And the sound of the LM 26's 24-bit A-to-D and D-to-A converters with 96 kHz internal sampling frequency plus 32-bit floating point internal data paths is nothing short of outstanding."
"I'm in the lucky position where, in most cases, I can rely on system techs to deliver a system well tuned and time aligned," said Ray Furze, The Pixies' front-of-house engineer. "That lets me concentrate on mixing the music and the creative aspects of an FOH engineer's job.
"During the show I am tied to the desk, but a technician can roam the venue and, where needed, make adjustments; this is where the Lake proved to be a great tool," Furze continued. "For the US tour I had Dave Kuhn and Andy Vickery, both of whom did an excellent job and soon learned the specific sound I try to achieve with The Pixies, which is a very dynamic, alternate-rock sound.
"I am aiming for a great club-gig sound in venues that range from larger clubs holding 1,000 to 2,000, through theaters arenas and festivals up to 70,000 audience members. That is a major variation in acoustics – the LM 26's flexibility and the ease of use certainly had a big part to play in handling that diversity."
Furze credited Vickery as "very much the ‘Technical Wiz Kid' on this tour," and noted that Kuhn "could monitor the entire system wirelessly and make adjustments to the LM 26 processors on the move.
"The d&b J-Series has been my system-of-choice since it came out," Furze added, citing "excellent and consistent results around the world. In most cases I only have one or two room-resonance notches to deal with, and the Lake's graphic interface made these easy to sweep and fine tune. I would run the spectrum analyzer during the show to help point out any changes in acoustics that had occurred between sound check and performance. I can't be more technical, but that in itself is a good recommendation – had I not been pleased with the sonic results, I'd have been asking a lot more questions! In reality, the best pieces of equipment – like the LM 26 – are those that you don't hear."
"We also use the LM 26's built-in Audinate Dante digital audio networking on other tours to streamline systems setup and interconnections using a single CAT-5 cable," noted Vickery. "LMG has a major inventory of Lake systems, including the original Contour units. The new LM 26 is really a more compact and cost-effective version of the Contour. We love the sound and ease-of use that the processors offer us in a wide range of situations on the road."
For more information, please visit http://lake.labgruppen.com.
