DALY CITY, CA — Maroon 5 is currently on tour in support of their sophomore studio outing, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, released this spring. Maroon 5 engineer Ryan Cecil decided to take the Digidesign Venue system on the road to handle the band’s monitor needs.
Cecil runs 48 inputs from the stage to the FOH Rack, which houses the full five-DSP card complement. He also makes extensive use of the Venue system’s PQ matrixes to provide an added level of flexibility (compared to traditional auxiliary busses), employing six PQ matrix outputs along with 24 auxiliary busses to drive effects and other miscellaneous items.
“Having user-defined inputs on the matrix mixers is amazing when you need to send a number of sources to an effects plug-in, but don’t want to dedicate an aux or sub-group,” he says. “This has made it able to do what I would generally need a 40-bus console to do—that and the ability to drive any effects plug-in from a channel strip direct output.”
The system’s onboard plug-ins are designed to replace racks of his favorite analog outboard gear. “When I heard that the Smack! compressor was modeled after one of my favorite units, and that I could expect similar results, after trying it I haven’t looked back since.”
“I decided to trust what my fellow engineers were saying and took Venue along for the ride,” he says. “I had only seen it on a few gigs, but never got a chance to mix on it. I was given a chance by the folks at Scorpio Sound in Boston to come down and pre-program what I could on it. A week later, and with only about an hour of set-up, I had the band playing in rehearsals on it fully satisfied. Being able to walk into places such as live sets with only a microphone package, and have [Venue feel] like it’s the console I have been using for months — within minutes — is amazing. On this tour I am filling in as production manager, and that wouldn’t have been possible with an analog desk.”
With the help of Digidesign, Cecil also created a talkback system for the band. “The guys all have switch mics that come into the console. I have that set up with a ducker plug-in on the cue bus. When the guys ask for something, it keys the ducker to lower the overall volume of the cue mix and keep their talkback on top. It keeps it from getting way too loud in my ears.”
The remarkable thing about Maroon 5 is that their 2002 debut release, Songs About Jane, not only garnered just about every award in the book — from Grammy Awards to MTV Music Awards — it also produced multiple hit singles that allowed the band to tour extensively throughout 2003-2005
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