United Kingdom (May 23, 2023)—UK metalcore act Bring Me The Horizon has had a busy post-pandemic touring schedule. After a string of UK summer festival dates last year, the band tore through the U.S. and Australia before hitting 18 European cities this spring, and there are still a bunch of 2023 festival appearances ahead for the group. Supporting the band through all that has been the UK arm of Eighth Day Sound under Clair Global Group.
The band’s longtime FOH Engineer, Jared Daly, has been using an Allen & Heath dLive S5000 with a compact dLive MixRack and a DX32 Expander nightly. “The band spends a great amount of time curating their live shows,” he said. “The level of detail that goes into every aspect of their production is more detailed than any other artists I’ve ever worked with…. From the moment we started to work with [Eighth Day Sound, it has been fantastic. The system on stage is fairly complex and given the amount of MIDI distribution and Optocore pathways we need, [Eighth Day’s] Stuart Wright worked with us from the very beginning to understand our exact requirements and streamline our package as much as possible. Everything came out of the shop ‘show ready’. There were no tweaks required during production rehearsal, and the crew on tour with us has been incredible. The support and knowledge from Eighth Day’s tech department have been invaluable.”
This tour is the band’s first without an analog split; instead, Daly pulls inputs from the stage Optocore network to minimize the SL rack footprint and to simplify the line system: “I’ve been a dLive user for years, spanning from my time mixing monitors for the band. I’ve loved my time on the Allen & Heath platform; being able to move up and down the console range has been key, as I never have to change or rebuild the show file during any fly show configurations. For outboard, I have one analog piece for the final stage of the mix before broadcast—a Neve Portico MPB, which gives one last stage of saturation and mid-side processing. The show has been built to prioritize the broadcast mix. Working backward from that near field mix and configuring the PA to translate has been a great workflow.”
The FOH show file relies heavily on Timecode and is being constantly adjusted underneath the fader. Daly noted, “Throughout, there are elements of theatrical performance that require specific mutes to support moments reflected in the video and lighting designs. There’s volume automation into reverb returns, EQ changes to blend older and newer songs, and a vocal that goes from a full belt scream to a whisper.”
Capturing those vocals are DPA D:Facto 4018s across the board: “Oli [Sykes, lead vocalist] is running a Shure Axient wireless handheld and Jordan [Fish, keyboards] has a wired DPA. I requested that we move to them in 2019 as I had the chance to try them with another artist and loved them. The off-axis rejection is excellent for those moments where Oli stands close to the drum kit.”
Hanging above the stage is a d&b audiotechnik’s KSL system provided by fellow Clair Group audio provider Skan PA. As designed by his right-hand man, Jack Murphy, Daly shared, “We had some weight considerations and with flying the sub hangs, with advice from Jack Murphy and Eighth Day, it was decided to move onto KSL to allow more boxes to be flown. The KSL sounded exceptional, as d&b always does. It’s a very tight-sounding box. Having flown subs affords me the luxury of not having to push the low end as hard for the audience in the front rows. A lot of the new material has plenty of low end that needs to reach everyone, and we’ve had great success doing that by incorporating flown subs,” he concludes.
The system comprises KSL loudspeakers with SL subs both flown and on the floor in an array, with a handful of Y10P deployed along the front for fills. All of that is driven by d&b D80 amplifiers, making full use of d&b Array Processing.
In monitorworld, engineer Jon Simcox is running 18 wireless IEM mixes and a hardware pack for drummer Matt Nicholls, plus side fills, extra sub lines on stage, drum thumper, and around 11 FX sends. The band all opt for Jerry Harvey Audio JH Audio Roxannes. Mixes are generated on a DiGiCo Quantum 338 joined by a Waves server. Plug-ins employed include PSE, 1176 for parallel drum compression, SSL channel, BSS402 and H-Verb.
