Study Hall

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Bowl Full Of Sound: Creating An Expansive Soundscape For Bon Iver

Front of house engineer Xandy Whitesel and Clearwing Productions take L-Acoustics' L-ISA immersive system for a spin in Santa Barbara.

Spreading It Out

Despite a few “ear-candy” moments – including Bon Iver’s space jam “21” that he says “invites craziness” and “666,” where Mosquera further engaged the crowd by waving Vernon’s pocket piano voice all around the venue with a hand-motion tracker at FOH – the band wasn’t looking to stage a sonically “gimmicky” performance, Whitesell explains, adding that they were excited about the separation that the vocal, musical, and percussive elements would have during the show.

“With two drummers often doing very different things, there would normally be a certain amount of blurring in a stereo system where all of these elements would share the same position in the L/R mix,” says Sugden. “But with L-ISA, Xandy was able to spread everything out very naturally by their positions on stage and you could distinctly hear both of them, which is a rarity.”

Bon Iver production manager James Dean adds, “Walking around the venue, you can more easily place instruments in the field of ‘vision’ using your ears,” he says. “It was much easier to notice which drummer was doing which part. It was like wearing headphones, but without the headphones – very detailed. For the amount of subs in the system I was also highly surprised by the clarity and strength of the low end. I was not expecting that.”

As the FOH engineer and decision-maker on the show’s L-ISA mix, Whitesel states that he walked the venue extensively during the band’s rehearsal day and soundcheck to critically listen. “I found that the mix and image at front of house was impressively presented at almost every seat in the house, which was fantastic. My primary objective for this show was to increase perception of width and audio quality for the bulk of the audience, which it absolutely did. L-ISA lives up to its hype.”

How it all looked during the Bon Iver performance. (Credit: Matt Benton)

With each sonic element having its own distinct identity in the wider soundscape, Whitesel also had several moments during the concert where he“noticed things that I’d never noticed before. And, as a mix engineer, being able to identify elements to operate on with speed and precision made mixing this complex band easier, faster and even more fun.

“This performance was easily my favorite Bon Iver show in the past three years,” he concludes. “We accomplished a beautiful, huge, wide, immersive, engaging presentation of the band’s music, and it turned out magnificent. I imagine that this experience must have been what it felt like to be a recording engineer in the ’60s going from mono to stereo for the first time. It’s hard to go back to the old format once you’ve heard the difference.”

 

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