Los Angeles, CA (June 9, 2023)—Having recently added another Grammy Award to their growing collection, Sam Smith is now on a 75-date tour with veteran FOH engineer Jim Ebdon behind a variety of Solid State Logic gear.
Ebdon, whose extensive résumé includes tours with Maroon 5, The Weeknd and, most recently, Justin Bieber, elected to take out an SSL Live L650 console along with three 32-input Net I/O SB 32.24 stage boxes on Smith’s seven-month-long Gloria The Tour. “The console sounds so good,” Ebdon says. “I also use The Bus+ and a Fusion on my mix bus, and that’s a really great combination. You think you’ve dialed up a great mix and then you go into The Bus+ and the Fusion and start playing around, and suddenly you have an even better mix. The combination is phenomenal.”
On this tour, he adds, audio provider Solotech is supplying a d&b audiotechnik GSL main rig with flown subs and KSL side and rear hangs, together with J-Sub and J-Infra subs under the deck.
Describing the L650, he says, “It’s got a much bigger, deeper sound, and I’ve always preferred the mix bus sound of SSL Live compared with other consoles.” While the mix bus delivers SSL’s characteristic “larger than life” sound, Ebdon says he is also happy with the preamplifiers: “I am only using SSL Live mic pre’s; I don’t use any external third-party mic pre’s for anything. The inputs and outputs of the console are one of the reasons I chose it.”
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With any artist, but especially with Smith, Ebdon endeavors to let the vocal shine through without a lot of processing. “Sam Smith is known for singing and their voice is just phenomenal. Audiences are coming to hear their voice, so I’m also very aware of levels and how loud things are. You can hear a pin drop in some parts of this show, but people also want to be thrilled by the excitement of some low end and some dance-type music. And the SSL Live console is so great for facilitating dynamics,” he says.
As for vocal processing, Ebdon is as hands-off as possible. “You can over process the human voice. I want the human voice to sound just like you are six feet away. Even though it’s amplified, it’s still going to sound the same.” But using the Violet EQ section of the Fusion processor, he says, “I can get some of that 12k, 18k back in there, some of that air that you can hear from a record. And it doesn’t screw up the actual tonal quality of the voice.”
