For the past five years, Fall Out Boy FOH engineer Kyle Chirnside has been manning the controls. For the band’s current world tour, Chirnside is turning to the Midas PRO6. “I’ve always been a Midas guy,” Chirnside said. “Whenever I had a choice, I would have my XL4. But then I had the chance to test drive the XL8.” That opportunity came with an invitation visit Metallica FOH engineer Big Mick Hughes during preparations for Fall Out Boy’s autumn 2008 tour of the U.K. and Europe.
“We were at his house, sitting around mixing Metallica tunes on the XL8, which was huge for me. I must have remixed that song ‘Battery’ a hundred times that day. I fell in love with the console. So when I heard Midas was developing a smaller, more affordable digital desk, I was totally into it.” That console was the PRO6, which Chirnside and Fall Out Boy promptly took out on tour.
That first tour with the PRO6 led to a change in how Chirnside did his job. “Since I was a new user, I brought my trusty EL8s along for vocal processing, but I never touched them,” he said. “Instead, I ended up using the console’s internal 3 band compressors, which sound amazing. They really made all the vocals pop out and stay dominant in the mix from a whisper to a scream. For Pete Wentz’s bass, the PRO6’s corrective compressor is perfect on both the DI and SansAmp channels.”
At the output stage, Chirnside relies on the PRO6’s internal Klark Teknik EQ section, which he describes as “quick and precise,” to dial in the right sound for every act on the bill.
Clair Global supplied a PRO6 for Fall Out Boy’s spring U.S. tour, which featured four supporting acts. “Even with five bands, we only used one desk,” Chirnside noted. “It was easier and more cost effective than alternating between two consoles.
“It saved us a lot of money in renting another console and having a huge rack of outboard gear,” Chirnside said, adding that “it was a great opportunity for all these young engineers to be in a big show and mix on a digital desk. It was amazing to watch these rookie engineers just jump right in and get it.”
Audio connectivity from the DL431 to the PRO6 control surface consists of a pair of thin Cat5 cables, one of them redundant, eliminating the need to run a bulky copper snake. Similarly, redundant power supplies at the control surface and in the I/O and DSP modules ensure continuous operation even in the event of failure.
Expanding on his observation of the rookie engineers taking to the Midas console, Chirnside noted that each band’s engineer could simply load his show file between acts, do a quick mic check and be ready to go.
“The PRO6 is laid out like an analog desk, so you’re reaching in the same direction you always have. And if you can’t figure it out, there’s a screen right there that tells you what you need to know. These young engineers for our opening acts, on their first major tour — they had it nailed within a couple days. It was great to watch.”
