It’s been a busy summer for Nine Inch Nails. The band recently wrapped a successful tour with a final performance on August 30 at the White River Amphitheater in Auburn, WA, with the memory of countless sheds, arenas and a lot of festivals in their wake. A talented audio crew of four kept the group sonically together from Europe to the left coast. Audio was provided by Firehouse Productions of Red Hook, NY.
“The main challenge has been with the roofs of the sheds we play,” says FOH engineer Antony King. “Once you put a tin roof or a highly reflective tent on anything, it won’t sound great. You’re trying to keep the mix as clean and accurate as possible without exciting the room. Places with no roof or walls, such as Jones Beach [in New York], sound great.”
And not all sheds are created equal. Monitor engineer Michael Prowda points out that some have a built up stage, some are arena-like, and on others, “the band is playing on concrete, and there’s not a lot you can do about that.”
NIN has a reputation for pushing boundaries with an incredibly high-energy live show, and this tour does not disappointment. They’re comfortable in the role of arena-rockers, and they gave their fans plenty of hits mixed in with their newest material. Setting the tone was the new “Copy of A” and was followed up with “March of the Pigs” and “Terrible Lie” and more. It’s made them a particularly big draw at the festivals.
“One of the more challenging aspects of festival shows is sorting out the stage space allocation,” Prowda says. “We have a lot of gear with backline and audio,” and because festival stages can be smaller, monitor engineers must especially be on their toes at all times.
The View From FOH
King has been mixing for 15 years, having previously worked for Depeche Mode, The Cure, Noel Gallagher, Beck and Amy Winehouse. This is his first tour with NIN.
For the European portion of the tour, they were using L-Acoustic K1’s, then switched to d&b audiotechnik’s J-Series for the U.S. leg, which King credited as “smoother” and “more musical.” King gives L-Acoustics kudos – “most of their products are fantastic,” he says, calling V-DOSC “one of my favorite systems,” but he notes that the K1’s are not a personal favorite among the brand’s offerings.
King mixes on a Midas XL8, which he prefers for the sonic quality of the preamps, adding that the console is easy to move around. A Manley VoxBox tube mic preamp/compressor/EQ/de-sser/limiter is employed on Trent’s vocal. Also in the FOH rack is a Chandler Limited TG1 Abbey Road limiter (a recreation of the classic EMI TG12413) used on drums; a TC Electronic D-Two for delay effects; a TC M6000 using the MD4 stereo 5-band dynamics algorithm on the system bus (which King says is “really cool”); and a Massenburg GML 8900 dynamic range controller as a bus compressor. King records the shows to Magix Sequoia software via an RME MADIface XT interface that brings the MADI feed into the DAW.
One challenge that kept the crew on its proverbial toes is that the show is different every night. “The band decides that day what they will play,” King says. “The set list can change by two songs or 10.”
Meanwhile, in Monitorworld
Prowda has a bit of a history tweaking knobs, one that goes back to 1977. “Our first gig was indoors in Las Vegas, and after that it’s been all outdoors, starting with a festival in Vancouver,” he says. “I do like these summer runs when you’re out in the elements; otherwise you’re in arenas all the time and you don’t see the sun.”
But of course weather has a way of being… weather-ish. “Going through Texas and Florida, it was so hot and humid, and then you play Albuquerque, where it’s ideal weather and such a relief.”
Prowda says he benefited from a healthy rehearsal period, where he was able to get “90 percent” of the mix structure. “Once I dial in the band they rarely ask for anything, which is good. “I feel like what I do should be the least of their issues. I want to be invisible. I want them to do their performance… honestly, I haven’t talked to Trent [Reznor] about audio in months!” He adds that everyone is on Jerry Harvey Audio JH16 IEM’s, and that is supplemented with four onstage d&b B2-SUBs for added LF impact.
Reznor is a whirlwind on stage, and sweat comes with that dynamic performance, so his in-ear always needs attention. “It messes with him, but he accepts the situation,” he says. “He might say something into the mic [that goes just to the audio crew], and sometimes he needs to switch his ears out,” though there’s often not time for that as the show starts and runs solid and doesn’t slow down until it stops 90 minutes later.
Prowda is also handling the wireless. “For the most part, it’s workable; I’ve got a few little gadgets to help figure it out,” he says. “The biggest challenge is the time frame with three bands. Everybody is doing everything like an audio crew, so once the P.A. is out of the way, I can get my gear and desk up, the splitter and all that stuff. Then as soon as I get power, I do RF allocation, scan, and then basically make sure I have good reception, and then run a line check at a certain time every day and hand the stage over to Soundgarden.”
As far as those RF gadgets go, all the instruments and in-ear monitor transmission is Shure, and he uses Shure’s Wireless Workbench. The Axient spectrum analyzer interfaces with Wireless Workbench, and he deals with 14 guitar systems on stage that he includes in his scan. “It’s old-school pencil and paper and give to the three guitar techs — that little Axient AXT600 is a really cool device. I rely on that.”
Prowda is working on an Avid Venue Profile for this project. “I like using it with the Sonnox Oxford Reverb.” He also likes the Waves C12 for vocals and SoundToys Decapitator analog saturation modeler on drums and bass. “These plug-ins all work with the Digidesign platform, and I’m very familiar with the desk. I’ve worked with other boards, but this is my go-to. And the SoundToys Decapitator is an amazing tool to use on drums, bass, hi-hats — it all sounds great. There’s a lot of good equipment out there, but nobody complains when I use this!”
Interestingly, he only uses reverb on the vocal spread, and he praises the Oxford for getting the voice out of the middle, which he finds helpful as no matter how good the in-ear is, there’s still a lack of dynamic range.
Prowda started the microphone selection, and FOH engineer King came in and had his own preference, so there are double mics in some places. “He wanted the [beyerdynamic] 201 instead of the 57 on the snare, and wanted 414s on overheads instead of [A-T] 4051s, so we just put both mics on. There’s two sets of overheads, and actually three mics on the snare.”
Prowda has an impressive resume of respected acts that have been known to hold monitor engineers to high standards including Radiohead, Kayne West, Julio Iglesias, The Eagles, and (gulp) Prince. “I’ve been blessed,” he says; when asked specifically about Prince, he says not only was he never fired as so many others were, he quit on his own (“he was too loud!”).
He’s worked with NIN for nine years, and David Bowie for 10 before that. He’s also worked with personal favorite Joe Jackson for 12 years. “I approach monitor mixing like a mastering approach, like mixing an album,” he says.
System Engineers
The show is complicated enough to require two system engineers – Jaime Pollock and Tim Fraleigh. Pollock has been with NIN since 2008, and working in live sound since 2002.
“My main role on this tour is to design and tune a P.A. system that can deliver high-end results, covers the venue evenly, and keeps continuity from show to show,” Pollock explains. “All the inputs for the P.A. come in analog to a Riedel RockNet ring and then distribute digitally at 96K to Dolby Lake’s before hitting the amplifiers. I do most equalization by ear and use Smaart v7 for time alignment.” He adds that the typical setup also relies heavily on d&b audiotechnik components. There are 14 J-series line arrays on each main hang and 10 J’s for each side hang. Then there are eight d&b J-SUBs flown behind the main and d&b B2-SUBs on the ground.
Fraleigh is monitor tech, and has been in pro audio for 15 years. “My responsibilities are to set up, power up and tie together all the audio gear on stage,” he says. “Most days I even get to help the guys fly the P.A.”
Fraleigh adds that they have used essentially the same gear for this entire tour, with relatively minor changes in inputs and microphones. “The challenge on this tour is presented in adapting to a constantly changing visual production,” Fraleigh explains. “Every separate leg of this tour has had slightly different issues to deal with.” This includes a rolling stage and huge moving video carts; the audio crew needed to run their cables around and keep gear clear of these moving obstacles.
Fraleigh says this is the first tour that he’s had to set up stage subs upstage of the performance area. The subs are spaced evenly with just a little delay to allow the crew to cover the stage much more evenly than would happen if you just placed stage left and stage right subs. Another situation they had to deal with was the need to switch all of Trent’s vocal mics, using several spares along with a couple of different mic positions.
“When we couldn’t find what was used on the previous tour, we ended up with the Coleman Audio GT6A,” Fraleigh says. “This switcher was designed for high-level instrument switching and soon presented a problem. Switching would cause a pop, which would occur because of voltage build-up in the cable. This problem was alleviated with a few resistors soldered on the input side of things, and it has been performing well ever since.”
Fraleigh adds that this is also the first tour in which he’s had to use rechargeable batteries for IEM’s, wireless instrument packs and backline pedals.“ The Ansmann batteries we are using along with four rackmount chargers have proved to be a great product. It’s a quality battery, which in most cases last longer than a Procell, and we’re doing our little part to help the environment.”
Fraleigh says his favorite part of the show is when it all comes together, then holds together well, despite “the abuse they take from other gear and artist alike. One small detail, broken or misplaced, can lead to myriad other problems that will end up lasting the entire show.”
But with this crew, that ain’t happenin’.
“It’s been a great lap around Europe and the U.S. with NIN,” King sums up. “Working with Trent has been fun. He’s a really interesting guy. With virtual playback, he can stand next to me, hear exactly what it will sound like that night and really zone in on the details.”
