After the recent success of their single 'Firestarter', Prodigy are now out on the road with their Breathe tour. Paul White caught up with them in Wolverhampton to discuss the logistics of fire breathing with Monitor Engineer Joe Campbell and FOH Engineer Nick Warren.

Under cover of a damp October evening, and equipped with a backstage pass, I picked my way through crowds of eager fans outside Wolverhampton's Civic Hall to meet the sound crew responsible for providing the raw energy that makes a Prodigy concert the overwhelming audio-visual event that it undoubtedly is. With over 30 kilowatts of onstage monitoring and over twice that much front of house, in a venue of this size, the audience didn't stand a chance — but that's exactly the way they like it. Was that applause, or simply the sound of hundreds of pairs of eardrums meeting in the centre of their owners' heads?

Without doubt, the support band and DJ were monstrously loud, but it turned out that they were just using the monitor system. When Prodigy took the stage, the main PA was brought on line and vital organs everywhere started to resonate alarmingly. The sound from the Concert Systems' EAW rig was solid, surprisingly clean, and showed more immunity to feedback than physics had any right to permit, but the overall result still amounted to a relentless assault on the senses.

IN THE CANTEEN

However, that's merely the end of the story — the beginning comes just after the soundcheck. In the catering area, I spoke to Joe Campbell (Monitor Engineer on the Breathe tour) about the band's recent experience with Garwood's in-ear monitoring system. This was interrupted occasionally by Prodigy's charismatic Keith who had taken it into his head to dress as a chicken and roll across the tables...

"Maxim [Reality] was quite happy with the way the Garwood system sounded — it's just that the earplug kept falling out. Once new earpiece moulds have been made, we'll be using it again. It means that wherever he is on stage, he gets a perfect stereo image, which is good for a performer who moves about as much as he does. He can even go right off stage, away from the monitors, and still hear everything he needs to hear."

So tonight it's a conventional monitoring system comprising wedges and sidefills — and a big system it looks for such a modest venue. What's the total power you've got out there?

"It's quite a lot — there's one Crown VZ3600 for the sub, a VZ5000 for sub, a VZ5000 for bass, two VZ3600s for mid/high, and there are six Crown 24x6s running wedges. There are four 2401s running Liam [Howlett]'s SSE fills, and in total, we have six EAW KF850A sidefills, six EAW SB850 sidefills for the sub-bass, and 12 Concert Systems bi-amped wedge monitors."

At tonight's gig, you're off to one side of the stage with no direct line of sight to the performers. How can you set up the right balance and make such changes as are necessary?

"I use a pair of listening wedges to check what the performers are hearing. Monitoring is fairly simple once it's set — it doesn't change that much really during the show. You just have to be careful of feedback, because Maxim tends to run about on stage; he leans into monitors and kneels in front of the wedges."

I can see you have banks of KT graphic equalisers set up on the various monitor outputs, but other than those, do you have any technical assistance in suppressing feedback? For example, something like the Sabine feedback eliminator?

"No, there's nothing fancy, because the band don't like to hear any sudden changes in sound, such as compression, or when a feedback suppression filter switches in. However, they do like to work with a huge amount of on-stage level, so it's quite a difficult and delicate operation. It's a battle between getting the level and EQ of the music right, and keeping the voices audible."

TESTING TIMES

It sounds an almost impossible task. It's one thing putting a wedge monitor in the dead zone of a hypercardioid mic on a stand, but when you have a singer with a radio mic moving all around the stage, it must be incredibly difficult to avoid feedback?

"It's even worse than you imagine — he'll place his hand, with the mic in it, on top of the wedge monitor, cup it in his hands and then bawl into it. That makes the mic sound completely different, so I have to EQ the monitors to try to keep the sound consistent. He'll also stand up against the sidefills, or even lean against them with his back to the speaker, with the microphone in his hand, six inches or so away from the mid-range driver. If you mute the mic in the wedges, and you're not quick enough to switch it back on when he comes to use it, you're in trouble again."

Have you been able to come to any rational agreement with the band about the laws of physics and their immutability, or do they just demand the impossible anyway?

"They're getting to realise now that certain things are possible and certain things aren't. They know that I'm paying attention all the time — and they never stop testing you on that. These two shows are particularly difficult, because I can't see what the band are doing. The stage set has taken up more or less all of the space on stage, so the monitor desk is off to one side, at floor level, with a rack of amps between me and the side of the stage."

Would a closed circuit TV monitor be useful for situations like this?

"Yes, it would be, and that's something we're looking at, but most of the time, we aim to get the monitor desk in the position where it's supposed to be."

What do you feel is the role of limiting in monitoring?

"We used an Aphex Dominator with the in-ear system, but with EAW wedges and sidefills, we rely entirely on the protection limiters in the EAW processors. There's no compression at all, but that does mean you have to pay attention to what you're doing, especially with a loudspeaker system that big on stage."

CHOICE GEAR

Do you have any preference for the type of equipment you use on a tour? I would imagine the choice of speaker has a noticeable effect on the levels you can get before feedback.

"I love the EAW KF850s and SB850s for sidefills — six subs and six 850s on stage. It's a system I've got used to. When you switch it on, it does exactly what you expect. I like the way that when the system is arrayed properly, as you walk past the loudspeakers the sound is nice, and even with no phasing in the midrange, or no loss of bottom end.

"Maxim holds his mic round the head and screams down it at the top of his voice..."

"The Concert System wedges are active driven from Crown Amcron amps with the crossover card in the amplifier, and again they're very good. The console is a 40-channel Midas XL3, which I really like working with. For the first couple of shows, we used a TAC SR6500, but to be honest, I prefer the Midas — it's a desk I'm used to. This really is my favourite system."

Even so, from what you were saying earlier, it sounds as if you're keen to move over to the in-ear system.

"We will be using it, but not at the expense of anything else; we'll be using it as well as the existing monitor system. It will mean that we can keep the on-stage monitoring levels a little less dangerous than we do now — at least, that's the theory!

"I've worked with in-ear systems before, and I think they're particularly good. Once the performers overcome having the moulded earpieces in their ears, I've not come across anyone who's not liked them. I think in-ear monitoring is the way forward."

Anything that can bring the on-stage monitoring level down must be a good thing, because a monitor system this size, which is almost half the power of the FOH PA, must have a significant influence on the FOH sound.

"It certainly does — our monitoring system would make a perfectly respectable PA in its own right."

With a system of this complexity, do you ever run into technical difficulties, such as stubborn ground loop hums?

"We have the perfect way to sort that out — it's called Jonathan Clark from Concert Systems. If you have Jonathan Clark, there are no technical problems — he's the man! The whole rig comes from Concert Systems in Manchester, so if there are any problems or changes in configuration needed, Jonathan fixes it for us. He's with us full-time on this tour. For example, in a venue the size of this one, the PA rig is bigger than what they are probably used to, so Jonathan makes sure there are no power supply problems."

FOH STAGE

When Joe's meal arrived, I turned to Nick who was still waiting for his custom-made pie and chips to turn up.

As I was saying to Joe earlier, a monitor rig this size must interfere with your FOH sound to some extent. Is this a problem for you?

"Well, it is loud, but if you take enough EAW with you, you can't go really wrong. Once the audience is in, the sound gets soaked up, and the band tell me they don't hear any of the FOH sound on stage either."

How do you go about specifying a basic rig for these tours where the venues vary in size considerably?

"We spec for the biggest rig we can, then leave anything we can't use in the truck. Having said that, we've managed to get most of it in to the majority of venues. Ok, it's a bit over the top to put 48 boxes in Wolverhampton Civic Hall, but we're paying for them so we might as well use them.

"We went for EAW, because it sounds flat — it's better than anything else I've used. When touring abroad, we normally fly out and use the system available in the country that we're in, so we get to use everything. With EAW, you turn it on, turn it up, and you're off. Obviously some venues sound weird, but generally, it's fine. We have used a 120K Martin rig in bigger venues, but in mid-size venues, I don't think I've used anything better than EAW. I turn the knobs on the desk, and what I want to happen comes out of the speakers — which is half the battle. It beats putting on a CD, then trying to EQ out all the shite you don't like. I like the combination of EAW and Crown amps — I've used it with other amps before now, but it just doesn't sound as good. Everything is calibrated, and in theory, I can't blow anything up!"

I assume you have the internal limiters set on all the processors (active crossovers) to set a ceiling on the drive levels?

"And in all the amps. It gives a double margin of protection, and with this gig, I'll take all the protection I can get!"

The processors are also EAW?

"Yes. EAW are apparently now doing a big stadium system working on Omnidrives, but I think I'd rather stick with the EAW processors myself. Again, I've used the speakers with other processors, but it's never sounded right."

STRUCTURAL DAMAGE

And you have another Midas XL3 desk for front-of-house mixing?

"It's one of those desks where you turn the knob and it just happens. You get used to equipment — you find what you like and what you don't like. Now I always use this console and it never lets me down. We had another monitor console on the tour before this one, but that just fell to bits on the road — Midas doesn't fall to bits!

"The first day I ran the PA up in here, there was stuff falling out of the roof. I was knee deep in crap — shit in the sliders — but it still works! I've even spilled cups of tea in Midas consoles, and they still work."

So some sort of fabric canopy over the console might be a good idea?

"That's what I'm thinking, because there's a serious amount of plaster coming out of this ceiling. It was like, 'Well what do you want to do on this tour?' 'I want to cause major structural damage to at least one building!' At the Apollo, one of the chandeliers dropped out; I've had light fittings coming out of things — it puts a smile on my face at the end of the day."

How do you approach the soundcheck?

"You can't go wrong with a mic plugged into the desk. You can stand there listening to CDs all day, and it won't do you any good. At the end of the day, stand there with a mic, tweak out what you don't like, and that's it."

You don't use a room analyser?

"No. You should be able to identify the frequencies where feedback occurs without an analyser. What's more, once the punters are in, it's all going to sound completely different, so you have to trust your instincts. The sound is always better when the audience are in, so I do more of a line check than a soundcheck, and trust I know the EAW system. When the show starts, I can tweak out what I don't like within 30 seconds.

"During soundchecks, performers don't give it their all, so if you do set a vocal level, it's likely to be a lot louder during the show. I'd say to any aspiring sound engineer, just turn the fader up and have a listen. So many people dive in on the EQ, but all you have to do is dial out what you don't like — it's more of a hands off approach than a hands on approach."

Having covered that element of your job, there's also the restraint part — the use of compressors and limiters. Instinctively, you'd imagine that any compression used in a PA system would bring you closer to the feedback threshold by increasing low level gain.

"I use compression very carefully. I've done a lot of work in studios where compression is the name of the game, but live, you don't need to overcompress. Vocals, for example: if it hurts my ears when he shouts, I wind up the compression until it stops — job done. It's all done by ear; there's no looking at dials or deliberating about attack and release times.

"With Liam's keyboards, the compression is there, but it only comes in if he does something mad. I want what he's doing on stage to appear out front — I don't want to mess with it if I don't have to. The compressors are just a safety measure.

"We used to compress just the left and right keyboard feed, and that's obviously a problem, because sometimes he's playing stuff on top of his samples. Now we've started processing things separately, which is better. I compress the vocals; the guitar is run in as it is; and the dbx 120 sub-bass generator is compressed horrendously, because I don't want to blow the PA up. It's fed from an aux send and comes back heavily compressed, EQ'd with a boost at between 60 and 80Hz."

BASSIC INSTINCTS

Where do you use the dbx 120? Is it simply to dislodge more masonry?

"Yes! If I can't see any red lights on the processors, then on goes the dbx to see if I can get some on! Seriously — where I really use it is for the quiet points in the show where I can bring in more sub-bass sounds. When people go to a gig, they want to experience it. They have the amazing light show, the band are giving it 110%, and there's this PA that's pinning them to the back wall — that's what I always wanted to happen at the concerts I went to, but it very rarely did. Bottom end is very interesting and people should use more of it."

What compressors do you like working with?

"The Aphex 661s Tubessence compressors are used on the two main vocals — Maxim's radio and Keith's [Shure] SM58 for 'Firestarter' — the two most important vocal parts in the show; the 661s go under the heading of compressors that don't sound like they're compressing. I also like the Summit and TLA compressors that we use. On the other vocals and for general purpose use, I have Behringers, but if I had more Aphex, I'd use that instead."

"...I like it when people say, 'That's the loudest thing I've ever been to!'"

At the front end of this technological engine is the microphone, and aside from Keith's mic on 'Firestarter', I believe you've moved to AKG?

"The mic box for this tour used to be just Shure 57s and 58s plus an AKG 414 for the percussion overhead! Maxim holds his mic round the head and screams down it at the top of his voice, so obviously, you're up against it from the off. He's also had a metal glove made, and this gave the Shures a problem. The Shure system also had built-in compression, which I hated — all that was left of the sound was the element I normally try to filter out!

"With the new AKG WMS300s, no matter where they are in the mix, I can hear everything he's saying. They don't distort at any level — although we have got the sensitivity set completely down — and they're not nearly as expensive as most top end pro mics. It's a matter of finding what works for you. They gave us these to try, and at first we thought they were a bit 'plasticky', but the sound — wow! It's a UHF diversity system with 16 selectable frequencies, so if we're doing a show with another band, like Oasis at Knebworth, and we have interference on one of the channels, we just open the mic, change the frequency, and it's fixed. We also use AKG's new guitar system — again it works great, I think they've got a winning product."

How many channels of radio are you using for this show?

"Three channels of radio mics and two channels of guitar radios — and there are never any dead spots on the stage. If you take the mic out to the back of the hall, you may find some dead spots; we don't have the full remote aerial system."

The final question has to be — 'Why do you like this job?' If the gig goes well, the band get the credit; but if it goes badly, you get the blame.

"Oh yes, I've had all that — I used to be a monitor engineer — but we have a good working relationship with this band. It's like: 'What's the difference between a monitor engineer and a toilet? A toilet only has to deal with one asshole at a time!'

"The only problem with working with one band for so long is that you get out of touch, but then again, I get to do what I want — lot's of bottom end, scare people to death — I like it when people say, 'That's the loudest thing I've ever been to!