Los Angeles, Calif. (August 25, 2025)—My Chemical Romance is celebrating the band’s 2006 album The Black Parade with a world tour featuring a massive L-Acoustics K Series rig provided by Eighth Day Sound, a Clair Global brand.
“This is a loud rock show,” reports system engineer Andy Fitton who, in just the past year or so, has worked on L-Acoustics tours with Madonna—including the 2024 Rio de Janeiro show where she played to 1.6 million people—and Vampire Weekend. “It runs 101 to 102 dB, and the mains are throwing 120 meters, or 400 feet, maintaining consistent tonal balance from front to back where we transition sonically between the main and delay hangs. To my mind, that is quite impressive.”
MCR FOH engineer Jay Rigby says he directly credits his decision to use L-Acoustics to Fitton. “When I took over mixing Vampire Weekend a couple of years ago, I fell into working with their system engineer, Andy, and the K1 P.A. they had out. I was initially skeptical, but after the first show, it was hands-down the best P.A. I had ever been on. What Andy is able to do with both Soundvision and K1 is incredible.”
To accommodate the different venue configurations on the tour, Fitton’s system design includes two main hangs of six K1-SB subs over 14 K1 over four K2 cabinets each. “That’s the largest hang of K1 that you can deploy,” he says. Behind each of those line arrays there are hangs of 16 KS28 subs, configured in a three-to-one ratio cardioid array. Side hangs comprise 16 K1 over six K2, and, for venues where upper bowl seating coverage is necessary, the tour is carrying two additional upstage hangs each of 10 K2. Where delays are required, three to four sets of 12 K2 are available, while on the stage, one A15 Wide and two KS28 subs per side provide side-fill for the band. Up to 108 LA12X amplified controllers are used for the largest shows.”
“On the ground, we have 12 carts of three KS28 subs with a two-to-one cardioid ratio,” he continues. “We have an A15 Focus for front-fill stacked on top of each one of those carts. That gets wrapped and strapped together on custom carts and rolls in and out like that.”
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The tour has maxed out the line length of the main hangs to accommodate Rigby’s sound design, Fitton says. “His mix is all about the low-mid. Obviously, you end up with a lot of sub with an array that size, but for him, getting the low-mid to sit in the mix, especially with this band, is absolutely crucial. If you listen to ‘Welcome to the Black Parade,’ there’s a tom fill right before the chorus that’s my favorite part of the whole song. So just making sure that people can feel that impact, even if they’re 600 feet away from the stage, is why we went for that line length.”
