Chicago, IL (July 21, 2015)—Fall Out Boy has been crossing the country with rapper Wiz Khalifa on the Boys of Zummer tour this year, and along for the ride is a sizable audio system from Clair Global (Lititz, PA). Chad Olech, engineering FOH for FOB, has been making the most of the sizable Clair i3 system, as well as a DiGiCo SD5 console, marking his first time on the desk.
“I’ve been using another manufacturer’s console for the last seven years and it’s a great console functionally, but it often needs some help sonically,” he said. “The workflow on the SD5 fits the way I work perfectly—I like to have everything in the same spot every time. I don’t want to have to think when I mix; I just want to mix. The SD5 lets me do exactly that. For instance, I can have the entire EQ strip in front of me and don’t have to page through to find things. I know exactly where the knobs are; it’s muscle memory. The same goes for the compressors; everything is where I put it and where I want it.”
His desk is also outfitted with Waves MultiRack, hosting a dozen or so Waves plug-ins. “I like having some of the Waves stuff here, and the SD5 is set up to integrate them nicely,” he says. “But the SD5 also has a four-band EQ on its inputs, and I’d bet that if I were to just use that, the audience wouldn’t notice the difference. That’s how good the console sounds.”
Monitor mixer Kevin Dennis is also on a DiGiCo desk—a SD10 console he’s using, which has inadvertently become a communications hub: “We have an extensive talkback system with everyone on in-ears, including the techs, and no speakers on the stage. Instead of hand signals, the techs can get onto the comms and let me know what they need, or vice versa. It’s all matrixed through the SD10, which makes it very streamlined. And Chad’s connected to this as well since we’re using the same rack and it’s all on fiber.”
Fall Out Boy
www.falloutboy.com/tour
Clair Global
www.clairglobal.com
DiGiCo
www.DiGiCo.biz
