Front-of-house engineer Wayne Hyde commented: "We were playing small to medium-sized UK rock venues, mostly using the in-house PA systems, I was therefore at the mercy of whatever each venue gave us. For some shows there was a separate monitor desk, but on the smaller gigs I had to mix monitors from FOH."
Hyde needed a four-way monitor system on stage ("suitably loud", he says) and then the house PA and relevant FOH mixing desk with standard outboard racks. Hyde commented: "We carry all our own A-T microphones, live 'mastering' gear and the XTA dynamics. I have two of XTA's G2s [four channels of gates], which are inserted over our kick drum channel, rack tom and floor tom. Two C2s [four channels of compressors] inserted over the two sub-groups for the drum kit [excluding hi-hats and overheads]: the first, over sub-group one, compresses the kit; whilst the second on sub-group two is set for minimal limiting. The sub-groups, whole kit and cymbals are then run in mono."
Compressor three is inserted over the bass DI channel and complements the uncompressed bass mic'd channel. The fourth is used for the main vocal, while some other gating and compression for other sources is applied with the in-house gates and compressors. Hyde was impressed by the;level of control this set-up offered him, commenting: "I really haven't seen a piece of kit where you can visually monitor every tiny stage of the signal as it passes through the gate or compressor like these do. The gates are fantastically transparent, which is what I expected. When the gate's open, you get the original sound passing through without any obvious manipulation or transient loss that can be associated with some other gates. The compression on the C2s seems to be very flexible, thickening and tightening the signal, whilst again not 'dulling' it, which is exactly what I need for Capdown. Being able to tune a compressor to its given source (without patching in additional side-chained EQ) is a real step forward too, and it's been particularly good over the vocal channel where I can keep control, remove 'cupping' side-effects and retaining transparency. I haven't used outboard dynamics with such vast 'control' options for the audio - the G2 and C2 make space for musical manipulation by the engineer, which if applied correctly will enhance the musician's performance."
Hyde and Capdown will be touring China in December and Japan in the New Year.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
