Founded by lead singer Amy Lee in 1995, American rockers Evanescence have built a huge fan following and sold millions of albums. The band returned to arena stages with an autumn 2021 U.S. and winter/spring 2022 European tour to support The Bitter Truth, its first album in more than three years. And in what seems to have become a recurring situation with many acts, the band was forced to cancel its last five East Coast shows due to positive Covid tests among the band and crew. These U.S. dates were rescheduled for mid-January 2022; meanwhile, the tour continues, with a Euro leg kicking off March 16 at the Quarterback Arena in Leipzig, Germany.
Solotech provided the audio support for the tour, and we caught up with the audio crew at the 19,000-capacity SAP Center arena in San Jose, CA.
The FOH View
FOH engineer Eddie Mapp had originally looked into trying out a Midas HD96 mixing console for the Evanescence tour, but couldn’t get one at the time, so he chose the Avid S6L, which he had used on a handful of gigs in 2019. “I had been using my Midas Pro series desks for live streams recording to Pro Tools, so for this run I thought it would be an easy transition with the Avid console.”
Mapp has 64 inputs from the stage and he’s sending three outputs (Left, Right, Sub) to the P.A. via AES. For effects, Mapp has a Bricasti M7 reverb, an Eventide Eclipse and a Line 6 Echo Pro delay for vocals. “Having some effect knobs to mix with keeps it fun and saves me from having to page over to the plug-in screen to make changes. For internal plug-ins, I’m only using the McDSP AE600 active EQ followed by an Avid pro multiband compressor on vocals. There’s the standard delay plug-in for vocal, and Revibe for drums; everything else uses the channel processing. Really, the entire integration with Pro Tools is probably one of my favorite features — especially when mixing on a remote Pro Tools rig. Having everything labeled and ready to go saves a tons of time and lets me also refine parts of the show by making presets on my days off and then importing them into the desk.”
The L-Acoustics K1 has been a favorite of Mapp’s for a while, and the K2, being in the same family, works nicely, he notes. “We’ve got a L/R hang of 16 K2’s and L/R side hangs of K2’s as well. These are matrix-driven from an AES out of the desk into the Meyer Galaxy at which point it’s distributed through AVB. The 16 K1-SB subwoofers are flown behind the main (8 left) and (8 right) arrays along with 16 KS28’s are sent from the console Mono out AES to the Galaxy, where the floor subs are also steered out for less center build-up. Having the flown subs puts more feeling in the upper seats and steering the ground subs out covers the sides more uniformly.”
Production since day one was a team effort. “The whole crew have been absolutely great,” notes Mapp, adding that “Mark Willett is a fantastic monitor engineer and we’ve got great communication about each audio step along the way. Meanwhile, systems engineer Hilario Gonzalez has been amazing at designing the system and makes for a very pleasant and efficient tuning process.”
The Systems Approach
“L-Acoustics has always been an engineer’s top choice,” says Gonzalez. “Eddie spec’ed it and so far, it has delivered all our needs and everyone is very happy with it. We use L-Acoustics Network Manager along with Rational Acoustics Smaart 8 to tune the P.A. Eddie and I put out various measurement mics and we tune together. Eddie is a very hands-on person and enjoys tuning. After it’s tuned, I walk the room with a Microsoft Surface Pro VNC’ed into the system to make sure every seat has the same experience.”
Monitorworld
Monitor engineer Mark Willett chose the DiGiCo Quantum 338 console because he had been a DiGiCo user for a long time. “I love using them, and recently after starting back up to work after Covid, I found with other artists that I used the SD10 or SD7’s on that they seemed to be having problems, as though they were getting old and not getting serviced, so I decided to go with what the newest option was. With the larger screens, you can also see in the daylight and the extra quantum processing the desk has been fantastic so far, it has everything I need on the console to do the job and the addition of all 32-bit cards in and out really makes a big difference to us. I did specify the console for this tour, so this is my first outing with it. It was a little harder to source, but Solotech came through and got me the console from England.”
Willett notes that the band has used the Sennheiser SR 2050 IEM system for some time, for two reasons — personally, he thinks they sound better and also because the artists he’s worked with — including Evanescence lead singer/keyboardist Amy Lee — like the EK2000IEM pack. “She is not a fan of the Shure packs with the two antennas, as they tend to get in the way of what she is wearing. The band is on the same packs as well, with everyone on Jerry Harvey Audio JH16v2 in-ears.”
So far, this tour has been a great experience. “Mixing this band every night is a pleasure,” says Willett. “They have a great set list and are really fantastic people to work with personally and professionally — and all of us are happy to be out working again and doing what we do. Hilario (Gonzalez), Nick Stover my monitor tech and P.A. tech Luke Biever from Solotech are a great team — they know their stuff and we never seem to have a bad day.”
Evanescence 2021/2022 Tour
AUDIO CREW
- Sound Company: Solotech
- FOH Engineer: Eddie Mapp
- Systems Engineer: Hilario Gonzalez
- Monitor Engineer: Mark Willett
- Monitor Tech: Nick Stover
- P.A. Tech: Luke Biever
P.A. GEAR
- Main Hang: (16) L-Acoustics K2
- Side Hang: (12) L-Acoustics K3
- Subs: (12) K1-SB — 6/side flown, (16) KS28, ground
- Fills: (6) L-Acoustics Kara (front fills) (4) Arcs (outfills)
- Software: Rational Acoustics Smaart 8; Meyer Sound Compass
- Drive: Meyer Galaxy Via AVB Stream
FOH GEAR
- FOH Console: Avid S6L 24c console
- Outboard: Bricasti M7; (2) Eventide Eclipse
MON GEAR
- Monitor Console: DiGiCo Quantum 338
- IEM Hardware: Sennheiser SR 2050
- IEMs: Jerry Harvey Audio JH16v2
- Wireless Mics: Shure AD4Q; sE Electronics MC1 V7 mic capsule (lead vocal)
