Jason Mraz’s vocal-centric tunes are a musical amalgamation of influences consisting of reggae, pop, rock, folk, jazz and hip hop performed by an equally diverse band consisting of acoustic and electric guitars and keyboards, ethnic percussion and brass instruments.
Out on an international tour continuing through all of 2009, supporting his multi-Platinum 2008 release, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things…, featuring the Top Ten Single, “I’m Yours,” the Virginia born and bred artist made a stop at Colorado’s dramatic 9,450-seat Red Rocks Amphitheater.
The Setup
Adding some “dB push” to Mraz’s melodic hit songs at, what has been called “God’s greatest all-natural, acoustically perfect live performance venue,” was a QSC Audio WideLine-10 Line Array loudspeaker system consisting of 24 cabinets per side with a four-cabinet center array.
According to Matt Kornick, Sound Image systems tech and Jason Mraz tour crew chief, “In addition, 16 JBL VerTec 4880 Subwoofers, in a cardioid pattern, provided the low-end and the entire FOH system was driven by 32 Crown I-Tech 8000 Amplifiers.”
The Mraz tour cabinet inventory rounds out with four Audio Composite Engineering 1160s for center fills, two Sound Image CF speakers for outfills and 12 Sound Image G2 stage monitor wedges.
Sound Image sent a Digidesign Venue console out on the Mraz tour, because as Kornick puts it, “E.T simply loves it and prefers the tactile feel of the faders on the surface.” (E.T. is front-of-house engineer, Ettore DeDivitiis. Yeah, that’s why they call him E.T.)
Michael Goldfarb relies on a Yamaha PM5D for the monitor console, as “he uses all of its onboard processing,” states Kornick. “Additionally, for an act like Mraz, Goldfarb will have at least 18 mixes to set at any given time, all capabilities that he finds the console can handle quite easily.” (Goldfarb also doubles as stage manager.)
Mraz uses a Shure SM-86 for his vocals, and the band is touring with SM-57, SM-58, SM-81, Beta 52, Beta 91 and Beta 98 mics with Shure UHF-R wireless components. The band also uses UR4D wireless receivers and UR-1 instrument pack transmitters and four Sennheiser G2 PM systems.
Early Adopters
“We were one of the first tours that early adopter Dave Shadoan of Sound Image sent out with the WideLine-10 System,” says Goldfarb, who has toured with Mraz since 2003. “That was Mraz’s 2005 Mister A-Z tour, which hit all the leading theaters.”
Goldfarb became acclimated to the WideLine-10 system, which on that tour consisted of 12 WideLine-10 cabinets per side. Now, after years of experience with the system, Goldfarb and ET refer to QSC Audio’s WideLine-10 system as about as “plug-and-play” as you can get.
“The WideLine-10 is a great on-the-fly PA, especially for when you’re in time-constraint situations, such as festivals,” says E.T. “It runs nicely from the truck, to the air, through the show and back to the truck.”
“At Red Rocks, with chains in the air and with power, we have 24 boxes per-side up and active in 35 minutes,” adds Goldfarb.
Mraz’s We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things… tour traversed the U.S., hitting the outdoor mega-theaters and sheds such as Red Rocks and, in the New York City area, the Jones Beach Amphitheater on Long Island.
“Where’s the rest of it?”
“When local sound professionals and promoters see the WideLine-10 system rolling off the truck, the reaction has consistently been, ‘where’s the rest of the PA?’” Goldfarb says. “Then they hear it. Anyone who knows anything about sound walks up to the soundman and says, “Man, that is really unbelievable.’
“This WideLine array’s wavefront length is the same as 12 or more large format line array cabinets, and the one thing that the audio science guys will tell you, it’s not the size of the speaker cabinet, it’s the wave form from top to bottom,” Goldfarb adds. “That’s why we have 24 boxes per side, which is as long as 16 VerTec Boxes.”
By the time the Mraz tour rolled into Red Rocks, E.T., who has worked with Mraz off-and-on for five years, had been on tour with the artist, and hands-on with the WideLine-10 system, for about 18 months.
Before that, E.T. had gained experience with the WideLine on tour with Canadian singer/songwriter Tom Cochran. Even so, E.T. found Red Rocks to be both beautiful and challenging.
“Red Rocks is a big venue,” E.T. says, noting that the system needs to be able to throw quite a long distance. “For this venue, we shade 5 dB off the bottom three boxes and 4 dB off the next four boxes up, with the front-of-house volume running just under 100 dB A-weighted. With the WideLine-10 system, you don’t need to punch it hard, like other systems, to get the fidelity.”
Additionally, ET is using the QSC SC28 system controller on his WideLine-10 system.
“The SC28 works really well, and I haven’t had to screw around with it beyond the presets. We’ve actually implemented setting changes during the show, especially when the set list changes on-the-fly, where I open up the splay setting to add a little brightness. Without having to reconfigure each cabinet, the presets make using the SC28 seamless.”
As a result, very little “tweaking” time and measurement is needed. At Red Rocks, tuning consisted of little more than time-aligning the subs to the rest of the rig and doing a bit of shading.
E.T. is also quick to add, “Other systems will claim 120-degree horizontal dispersion. The QSC WideLine-10 system delivers a wonderfully true 140 degree dispersion that actually does cover every seat in that range.
“The WideLine-10 system really has the qualities that audiences enjoy from a sound system, and it’s probably the best and most musical PA system for vocals,” E.T. adds. “The instruments layer very nicely into mix, from the top to the bottom, fitting in perfectly to support the vocals. That’s a big thing for me, as I work with a lot of artists like Mraz, Natalie Cole and Tom Cochran; these are all artists with a story to tell. It’s even more important for the fans who want to clearly hear the lyrics.
“For a fidelity mix, such as Mraz, that’s vocal-centric, acoustic instrument-based music, the vocals really just jump out of the WideLine System,” E.T. continues. “It’s not hard to make a ‘loud’ speaker, but it is really hard to make a loudspeaker sound good right out of the box. There isn’t another PA I would rather use for Jason Mraz.”
E.T. also credits the WideLine’s sound, even at low volume, without muddiness, and adds that it doesn’t get brittle at loud volumes either, “which is critical to an artist like Mraz, who incorporates a lot of horns into his music.”
During the show, E.T. adds, the only dynamics processing he uses are the noise gates on the drums. Everything else was running full dynamic range — no compressors anywhere — and the result was an unusually open and dynamic mix.
