Houston, TX (April 3, 2019)—When George Strait called his 2013-14 tour The Cowboy Rides Away, he meant it, bringing to an end his days of hard touring, but that didn’t mean he was done playing live. Having knocked out the occasional arena-filling show at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, he recently upped the ante, playing for more than 80,100 fans at the RodeoHouston NRG Stadium, setting the venue’s attendance record in the process.
The NRG Stadium stage package and control system was provided by GP Productions, with stack and racks coming from LD Systems. A complement of roughly 400 L-Acoustics K1, Kara and ARCS speakers combined to provide coverage across the full 360-degree seating area in the large venue.
Monitors for Strait’s 11-piece band was handed by veteran monitor engineer and Allen & Heath USA live sound / touring manager Mike Bangs, who mixed on an Allen & Heath dLive Digital Mixing System, just as he has for the T-Mobile Arena shows. Configured to address the challenges of a 50-foot square stage with limited sight lines, additional dedicated on-stage mix control was provided via networked Allen & Heath IP8 Remote Controllers.
Bangs notes, “The tactile control and on-the-fly programmability of the IP8s has a big impact on making the musicians feel comfortable in a complex sonic environment. I still maintain full control, but shows are much smoother with the IP8s placed around the stage. They allow me to really focus on George’s in-ear mix.”
“George’s camp has been running with dLive for a couple of years now,” adds Bangs. “The monitor system was designed by Josh Kaylor and it has since become an essential part of the show audio system.” Comprised of an Allen & Heath S5000 control Surface, a DM64 MixRack, and five IP8 remotes, close to 60 channels of audio are mixed and fed as needed to a dozen Shure PSM 1000 wireless and six d&b audiotechnik M2 stage monitors. A Waves Audio networking card provides 128×128 96 kHz audio interface for multitrack recording and virtual soundcheck.
“While I have the option of interfacing to external tools for plug-in processing, I’ve found everything I need so far ‘in the box’ with dLive,” Bangs says. “With just a taste of EQ and the 16T, Opto compressor and a few Dyn8 here and there, I have a highly intelligible and musical mix.”
Allen & Heath • https://www.allen-heath.com
American Music & Sound (US Distributor) • http://www.americanmusicandsound.com
