While the remaining members of Queen, Brian May and Roger Taylor, were pleasantly surprised to find that - twenty-one years after their last tour - Clair Brothers Audio is still the biggest PA rental company in the world, some things had changed, and in a subtle, quite ephemeral way.
The band’s itinerary has them scheduled to play the arenas of Europe, followed by some stadium dates this summer and a tour of the US in the autumn, “but we started rehearsals in Roger’s home studio, so space was a bit tight,” said monitor man Steve May.
Steve, a big chap with a curly grey mop, is one of those affable sound men who manages to cram a lot of information into a few well chosen phrases. “The band suggested I use a Yamaha PM1D, but at that time the pre-amps in the desk hadn’t been upgraded, and besides it’s nearly as big as an XL4. The logical choice was the new PM5D.”
With a stated preference for the old Midas analogue warhorse, how’s he finding the bijou Yamaha? “Overall it’s sounding great, the band think so too; it’s a busy show with lots of musicians,” not least the addition of Paul Rogers as front man. “And there’s a 12m thrust stage out in the audience, so there’s loads of different mixes to provide; I’m using all 24 outs and 3 Matrix sends. What first struck me about the desk is I like the way you can make it feel like an analogue desk.”
Steve then imparts a cautionary word that any engineer would be wise to heed.
“The weakest link in this equation is always yourself - until you’re one hundred percent conversant with the desk, whatever make, you’re going to be limited.” Has that happened to you? “No, but the key is to make sure you start off keeping it simple, then build in the recall scenes.”
That said May’s set up is far from simple, those outputs mentioned above feed two sets of In Ears and a multiplicity of wedges and fills, and he’s using off board digital dynamics control (XTA DP324 SiDD). “I find I need that to boost the output. That said the on-board EQ is excellent, so too the gates and compressors. In fact I find I barely need the on-board EQ because the desk itself doesn’t really colour the signal at all.” Which says a great deal about the quality of what he’s getting from the musicians.
“My only real need is for more graphics, there’s just not enough on board so I’m using a Yamaha digital mix engine, the DME64, to fill that need.” And an easy fit, as May describes. “The user interface is a bit fiddly, I could do with it being a bit more user friendly, but Yamaha are very good at that. I’ve already spoken to them about this and my experience tells me that they listen to such suggestions. That’s one of the better features of Yamaha; they take in everything you say.”
In the bigger scheme of things the change from analogue to digital mixing is slight as far as the band are concerned, the impact of Rogers presence being far more significant. However the PM5D has given Steve the ability to provide a large number of distinctly different mixes - not only for changes in stage location, but also to accommodate steep dynamic variations song to song - a fact that hasn’t escaped the band’s attention. One good reason why Steve already has the desk booked for the entire world tour.
