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Mixing Linkin Park Live with Ken 'Pooch' Van Druten

Jan 30, 2011 | 123,871 Views

In this video, FOH mixing engineer Ken 'Pooch' Van Druten shares some of his live mixing methods using Waves plugins on Linkin Park's 2010 Tour "A Thousand Suns".

Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda Vocal Chain

Like many other artists out there, Chester's and Mike's vocals vary greatly during their performances. They both have very different characteristics to their sound, but both literally go from very quiet, sung parts to screaming (in Chester's case) and full on rapping (in Mike's case). The dynamics of both vocals are often hard to deal with, but with the help of Waves plugins, I am able to get control over both.

Signal Chain

  • Vocal mics are the wireless Sennheiser 2000 with the 865 capsule
  • Avid D-Show Profile console, Avid D-Show Profile mic-pree

Plugins Used

Vocal Chain

The Avid console mic pre is set to +35. No EQ, gate, limiter, compression, or filters on the console strip are used. The console only acts as a mic-pre and channel fader for the vocal in the mix. All vocal processing is done with Waves plugins.

Plugins Used

  • First plug in is Renaissance Channel. I love this plug because it has great EQ combined with compression. I use both features for general overall EQ and compression.
  • Next is the DeEsser. There are always some sibilance issues when dealing with a singer who is very dynamic. This plug in works very nicely on both of my vocalists.
  • Next is MaxxVolume. I use this as a hard limiter, and I use the gating feature to help eliminate extraneous noise. This gate works very well for eliminating things on a relatively quiet stage when the vocalist is not singing. It has a very nice sound to it that works well with vocals, and doesn't sound like a gate opening and closing within the context of a mix.
  • Finally is the C6 Multiband Compressor. My secret weapon. The ability to really zero in on problem area frequencies of each of my vocalists allows me to really smooth out their sound.
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