If there’s such a thing as a modern Renaissance man, Justin Timberlake comes pretty close to fitting the description. From his early days as a child star on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club and youngest member of heartthrob boy band *NSYNC to his more recent years as a respected actor (The Social Network, Trouble With The Curve) and Grammy Award-winning solo artist, one starts to get the distinct impression that everything he touches turns to gold. Or quadruple platinum, more likely.
For the past 18 months, the “President of Pop” has spent most of his time on the road supporting his two most recent studio albums: The 20/20 Experience (March 2013) and its subsequent follow-up, The 20/20 Experience — 2 of 2 (September 2013). The related trek, appropriately named the 20/20 Experience World Tour, officially kicked off in October 2013 on the heels of a month-long co-headlining tour with rapper/producer extraordinaire Jay-Z billed as “The Legends of the Summer Stadium Tour.”
By the time you’re reading this, JT’s travels will have just come to a close with a pair of shows on Jan. 1 and 2, 2015 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena. Those two shows (also filmed for an upcoming tour DVD) followed more than 130 meticulously honed performances that generated over $230M in revenue and were attended by more than two million concertgoers worldwide.
Up in the Air
Montreal-based Solotech served as the sound reinforcement provider for the full duration of the tour and opted to ship the entire production complement — not just control — around the world, including legs in Australia, Europe and South America. Here in North America, the audio gear tidily packed into three semi trucks, which was only a small fraction of the 22 total trucks necessary to transport the massive staging and other elements that were part of the show.
Étienne Lapre has served as Solotech’s system tech for Timberlake since 20/20’s initial promo tour in July of 2013. Having previously worked with other popular solo artists like Bruce Springsteen, Kylie Minogue and Leonard Cohen, Lapre points out an interesting coincidence between the tour’s name and P.A. selection.
“The loudspeaker complement for 20/20 is entirely L-Acoustics, and the main P.A. arrays are comprised of 20 K1 and 20 K2 enclosures,” he describes. “The arrays are split into hangs of 10 K1 above 10 K2 per side, which was a combination that Andy [Meyer, FOH engineer] ultimately felt delivered optimum consistency from venue to venue and worked best for this production.”
The show originally hit the road with 16 K1 plus six KARA downfills per side simply because L-Acoustics’ new K2 hadn’t been launched at the time. “K2 came on the tour at the end of March when we were in Sheffield at the start of our European/U.K. leg,” Lapre recalls. “Although we had been pleased with the K1/KARA combination prior to then, the move to K1/K2 noticeably improved our overall system performance.
“The mains and the sides—which are now eight K1 over 10 K2 [versus the previous 12 K1 over six KARA]—work together better with the K2. It’s a slightly less powerful box than K1, so it excites the rooms less, which is good in this case and allows Andy to more beautifully recreate the mix. It’s different for every artist, of course, but we felt that K1/K2 was more precise and provided better definition than the K1/KARA combination.”
Lapre also points out that the switch optimized the system’s coverage, with the lower K2 boxes completely blanketing the entire arena floor and the transition to K1 essentially taking place at the base of the raked bowl seats. “The location for front of house changes every night, so the different degree angles offered by K2 — bigger vertical degrees like 7.5° or 10° — make it easier for me to hit Andy in the right position than the K1.”
In addition to joining the main and side P.A. hangs, K2 also finally took over delay array duties later in the summer as well, replacing KUDO, and V-DOSC before that. Six boxes per side flown back behind the house mix position cover the upper bowl seating at the far end of the arena.
To beef up the low-end reinforcement, arrays of a dozen K1-SB LF extension enclosures are flown adjacent to each of the main P.A. hangs, while ten SB28 subs per side are stacked on end in a line under the stage deck.
In venues where the show is performed to 270°, two arrays, each comprised of two SB18 subs flown above 14 KARA, deliver audio reinforcement to the rear left and right seating areas. Four tiny coaxial 8XT enclosures are mounted in the stage lip/thrust for front row coverage, and the entire system is powered by 66 L-Acoustics LA8 amplified controllers housed in 22 LA-RAKs—ten per side, plus one for each of the delay hangs.
Lapre praises the final iteration of the tour’s system as “the best and easiest ever. I typically configure the system in Soundvision from the tranquility of my hotel room using my own venue models or the online database,” he adds. “But if I have to laser the room, Scott Sugden [L-Acoustics’ U.S. head of application, touring] taught me a method to do it in less than 30 minutes. Once we have our rigging points, the P.A. flies very quickly; it’s in the air within 15 minutes. It’s certainly the quickest system out there, and great for a show like ours. It travels easy, packs four high, and makes everything fast and painless. Plus, it’s L-Acoustics, so it goes without saying that the sound is second-to-none.”
The Driver’s Seat
The P.A. mix for 20/20 was once again in the highly capable hands of Andy Meyer, who has been Timberlake’s FOH engineer since 2005’s year-long FutureSex/LoveSounds tour. Since then, however, Meyer notes that literally everything in his sonic toolkit has changed.
“Nothing is the same… zero!” he laughs. “I’ve changed consoles, outboard gear, even the way I do things.” Certainly one of the primary new elements on this outing has been the addition of a DiGiCo SD7 console, to which the engineer switched while on a tour with Mötley Crüe prior to 20/20.
“Given the size of Justin’s current production, it would have been difficult to do this tour with another desk,” notes the engineer. “I knew I needed to evolve and move into a console with a larger input count than what I had been using.
“When Justin was touring with Jay-Z, we had Justin’s band combined with Jay-Z’s music director, keyboard player, drummer and DJ. It was a massive band, and our input count hit 128 at one point — and that wasn’t even including the fact that each keyboard rig had its own submixer, so we had a total input count of probably 138, which is pretty impressive!”
On a regular basis, Meyer notes that the input tally falls somewhere closer to 108. “But keep in mind that there are talkback mics, eight audience mics — including four shotguns, two pencil condensers and a VP88 stereo condenser — plus some other miscellaneous things. That being said, the SD7 makes it very easy to manage all of those inputs. I just build my banks and know what they are — a couple banks of drums, a couple banks of percussion, and so on. Pretty simple.”
But the desk’s large input count and user friendliness wouldn’t have amounted to anything if the console didn’t possess the right sonic fidelity. “Running the DiGiCo at 96k, the best way that I can describe the sound is to borrow a photography analogy: it has tremendous depth of field. Also, it sums very well, and the preamps aren’t colored — they represent exactly what’s coming in — so it’s a very true desk. Paired with the K1 and K2, it sounds fantastic. The SD7 is obviously a very popular console, and with good reason.”
Meyer’s mix position boasts a generously equipped double rack of his own personal outboard gear — a collection that would make most recording studios jealous. “I essentially ‘master’ the P.A. with a Dangerous Music Bax EQ, Rupert Neve Designs Portico II master bus processor and [Anthony DeMaria-designed] PreSonus ADL 600 mic preamp as the final stage. That combination of processing across the master bus gives everything an analog richness and nicely melds it all together.”
As for plug-ins, the engineer turns to a wide palette of sonic coloration from Waves, including a C6 multiband compressor, MaxxVolume volume leveler, NLS non-linear summer, SSL E- and G-Channels and various other plug-ins like GTR3 Amps for distortion, and MondoMod and MetaFlanger for phasing effects.
“I’m also using the SD7’s internal console delay and reverb, which are like effects busses,” he notes. “So for horns, I just use the internal reverb, which sounds great and works really well.”
With so many things going on throughout Timberlake’s non-stop, high-energy, 2.5-hour show, Meyer naturally leans on the console’s theatrical snapshots to provide a starting point for his mixes. “I have about 180 snapshots that give me a good foundation for generally where the mix needs to be for verses, choruses, leads or whatever. But the P.A. sits a little different in every room, so I’m still mixing the entire time. It’s my goal to try to make everything sound exactly the same every night, regardless of the environment. We strive for consistency.”
Nowhere in the show is that more of a challenge than five songs into the second half when a 120-foot-wide strip of the stage — a $2M surprise element created by set/stage design company TAIT — rises up and literally transports the artist and his backup singers over the arena floor crowd to a B stage both behind and directly above the FOH mix position.
“I have to be very careful, because at that point, the vocal is in front of the P.A. the entire time,” says Meyer. “It kind of looks easy because it’s solid the whole time, but it’s not… at all! I am wearing that fader out. It’s never up unless Justin’s lips are moving. That’s a bit of a challenge, but it’s not insurmountable, obviously. It just takes some patience.”
Mics and More
As with all of the audio facilities on the tour, the microphone selection was carefully considered during the extensive pre-tour rehearsal period. Audio-Technica ATM25LEs are on all toms, while A-T AE5400s reside on the main snare top and bottom. Snares two, three and four each use Shure SM57s, kick is miked with a Shure Beta 91A, and hi-hat and overheads all feature Milab DC-96Bs. Percussion instruments utilize sE Electronics’ sE4 and Shure VP88 mics, while assorted A-T PRO 35s and ATM350s plus SM57s abound for other miking tasks. Guitar amps are equipped with sE Voodoo VRs, which, Meyer says, “sound amazing,” and bass uses two DIs — an Avalon and Radial Firefly — for two slightly different responses.
For Justin’s vocals, the audio crew uses an A-T AE6100 wireless hypercardioid handheld paired with an AEW-R5200 receiver. “On his vocal, I go analog all the way from the wireless to a Rupert Neve Portico II Channel, which feeds another PreSonus ADL 600 before going into the console,” he shares. “We also swap out the microphone’s special capsule every two weeks or so when it starts to lose a little bit of its bite, which keeps everything sounding really nice.”
Although Meyer is using a pair of active PreSonus Sceptre S6 monitors as nearfields, he notes that he originally relied on a pair of self-powered L-Acoustics 108P enclosures. “Because my mix position is out in the middle of the show floor, the 108Ps ended up being just a little too large for my space. If I could pole mount them, I’d be using them every day, but I can’t; I have to be as discreet as possible. The S6s work fine, of course, but the 108Ps allowed me to build this show to where it translated perfectly in the P.A., which was invaluable.”
Getting in Your Head
The newest member to join the 20/20 audio crew is Paul Klimson, who recently took over monitor mixing duties for Dan Horton in September. Just prior to coming aboard, Klimson spent six years as the monitor engineer for Jimmy Fallon, including the transition into his latest role as the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show.
After a fair amount of shared training on both ends, Klimson and Horton literally did a one-to-one swap, with Klimson joining 20/20 and Horton taking over at The Tonight Show. “It was a pretty comfortable transition,” says Klimson, who points out the exchange felt natural, seeing that Timberlake and Fallon are close friends as well.
Although there were no gear similarities between the two productions, Klimson was overjoyed to step into a DiGiCo SD7 at monitor world, which nicely matched Meyer’s desk at FOH.
“The DiGiCo was a huge step up for me,” enthuses Klimson. “I had wanted to use one with The Roots [Fallon’s house band] when they were out on the road, but they rarely, if ever, sound check, so there was no time for me to flip over. But I had used SD7s at a few festivals in Europe and absolutely loved them, so I was super happy to have one in place here for me when I arrived. It opened up a lot of opportunities because it can do so much.”
One of the first things that Klimson noticed was the sound: “It was incredible. Not only is the band great — and it’s nice using some outboard things like a [Empirical Labs] Fatso on the band bus and an SSL on the ears — but the desk alone on everyone else’s mixes… it feels like it never runs out. Especially if I run a mix at -20 or -10. It never feels like I’m working to get things clearer or wider. It just happens without any effort. I could get away with roll-offs and a couple of multi-bands and literally be done on the console alone.”
Klimson acknowledges that it really comes down to the source. “When you have a fantastic band, great mics and the SD7’s incredible pres, then you clock really well, have good gear on the back end, and go into JH [Jerry Harvey Audio] in-ears, it’s easy and you’re good to go. Even though I’m providing individual stereo mixes for 15 musicians, another stereo mix for Justin and his backup singers, and a few additional miscellaneous mixes, it doesn’t feel like I have to work that hard because everything in the signal path just sounds great. Same with Andy at the house mix. Although he’s mixing to an L-Acoustics P.A. instead of in-ears, his signal chain and final product transducer are both great, so the sound is fantastic.”
The DiGiCo desks at FOH and monitors are connected via an analog copper split, and the two sets of nearly-identical SD-Racks plus one SD-Mini (which is loaded with AES cards because it receives horns and backgrounds from a Shure Axient unit) reside just a few steps away from the monitor mix position below stage left.
The stage itself is super-clean, with no wedges in sight. All musicians and dancers are on IEMs, and only two transducers exist on the deck — a pair of Guitammer ButtKickers that are screwed to the underside of the bass and drum risers for additional low-end thump.
Renaissance Man
Having spent endless hours in world-class studios and being around the best in the business from his early teenage years on, Timberlake not only has a very specific vision for what he wants to achieve artistically, but the technological savvy to know how to get there — a fact that Meyer finds refreshing.
“As an artist, Justin is very aware of exactly what he wants to hear; he understands frequency response, he understands mixing,” Meyer reveals. “He knows that if he walks over and turns up a snare sample one dB, it can make or break the song. It’s literally how it sits. It’s that specific.
“He also understands the nuances of different rooms each day and the difficulty of making it consistent from venue to venue. And he gets the importance of having someone on my end of the snake understanding that and maintaining the integrity of his songs. It’s a big thing to him. He’s a perfectionist, which is awesome, actually. Some people might think of that as a curse, but it really depends on how comfortable you are with what you do. If you’re not comfortable, it’s going to freak you out when your artist comes around and starts spinning knobs. Me? I love it.
“Now, at the end of the tour, it’s rare to see him out here before a show because things have settled into an ideal routine. But in the beginning, he’d come out to the house mix position frequently during rehearsals, and I loved having him take the wheel because he has so much fun. As soon as he’d put his hands on the desk and start moving faders, he’d be grinning from ear to ear and rocking; he thoroughly enjoyed it. If he was an audio engineer, I have no doubt that he’d be the best at that, too.”
Although Timberlake naturally gets pegged first and foremost as a pop star, his 20/20 shows represent a much broader range of music than most fans might expect. Bouncing from EDM, hip-hop and R&B to piano ballads, country and oldies — including a solo acoustic guitar performance of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” complete with the King’s signature moves directly over the house mix position — he pulls it all off with an indefatigable amount of energy and maximum sonic punch.
“People inevitably come to Justin’s shows with a certain expectation of what they’re going to hear,” smiles Meyer. “But the comment I hear over and over is ‘I didn’t expect it to sound like that,’ and ‘that’ is always said in a good way. A very good way.”
Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience World Tour
CREW
SoundCo: Solotech
FOH Engineer: Andy Meyer
System Tech: Étienne Lapre
Monitor Engineer: Paul Klimson
Crew Chief: Colin St-Jacques
P.A. Tech: Marc Blanchard
Stage Tech: Alex Bibeau
RF Tech: Éric Marchand
For more crew and gear details, see FOH’s Jan. 2015 Showtime Top 10 Tours feature.
