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Meyer SIM System: Anita Baker Cooks In Concert
Pro Sound News
By Clive Young
Smooth, jazzy sounds are her trademark - a touch of piano here, a saxophone there and heady, enveloping vocals everywhere else. Anita Baker's sound mines familiar ground, yet the resulting music bears her distinctive stamp, placing her voice in both subtle and dramatic settings that allow her to really show her stuff. While the diva's albums feature technically great performances from Baker and her guests and sidemen, they are almost too polished, taking on a sterile quality even when they lay down the funk. Fortunately, Baker's live shows are a revelation; backed by a large group of musicians and background singers, Baker and company amaze with a loose but focused interplay that takes even her most familiar songs to someplace new. If Baker's albums offer a cold beauty, her shows are red-hot in their excitement and sound - and they're a heck of a lot of fun.
Backing up Baker and her crackerjack band is an experienced crew and some of the latest technologies around; notably, her sound system includes a Meyer SIM® System - the first to be taken out on the road for a popular music tour, according to Dave Lawler, the tour's crew chief/house SIM engineer. "[Baker] is very particular about sound, and we wanted all the tools we could get to make her happy," said Lawler.
The SIM system, a DSP-based instrument for acoustical measurements and sound system alignment, optimizes various "zones" of the speaker system to provide sound equalization most appropriate for a given area in a venue. Microphones placed around the venue send sound to a computer unit which analyzes and adjusts the speakers' output to account for delays, obstructions, distances, walls, "slap-back" and so on. Each zone is individually EQed to provide optimal sound for that part of the venue, creating a pattern that the computer remembers; when the audience arrives later, changing the nature of the patterns, the computer readjusts the sound to match the patterns created earlier.
The SIM system made band engineer Ken Newman's job different as well. "One of the unique things about this gig is having a separate person EQing the system and mixing the system. Normally, if I was doing front-of-house, part of my job would be to EQ it. Dave is the system EQ person and he concentrates on the EQ and the coverage of the room. It allows me to just concentrate on mixing as if I was in the studio working off of little studio monitors; that's what it feels like, often times. He keeps the curve constant, no matter how warm or cold it gets, how many people are in here, whether they have heavy or light coats; he keeps the curve constant from soundcheck to show. I can just mix instead of EQing, he EQs and the show sounds much better for it," said Newman.
Backing up Baker's expectations of a sound system is her knowledge about what she hears, according to Newman. "She is very particular and very sensitive. There have been times when Dave [Lawler], as sensitive as he is to pitch and bumps in the frequency response, will go up on stage with her and she'll say 'Something around 200Hz is bothering me; I think it's the center cluster.' So we'll turn off everything but the center cluster, listen to it and then turn it all back on and he'll say, 'Wow, it's like a dB of difference and she's hearing it!' She's taken her sensitive hearing and educated herself about frequencies of notes and frequency response and things, so she knows what she's talking about. A lot of performers would say '500 Hz' and you say 'oh, c'mon!' If she says 500 Hz, she's on it. More power to her; if she can do that, we can give her everything she wants."
The tour has been using Meyer MSL-5s and MSL-3As for its main clusters, as well as USM-1 for sidefills and MSL-2As for underhung sound. Added to the tour recently, however, are a number of prototype MSL-4s, which will be commercially released at the New York AES show in October. The 3-foot high speakers feature a single 12" and a horn-loaded high end. This is all powered by Crest 7001 and FA800 amplifiers.
The different effects used throughout the show were chosen very specifically. "I worked very closely on the design of this set up with Gerard Smerek, who is Anita's studio engineer and producer. He said he wanted specific effects at our disposal for us to use at different times. I've got a Yamaha SPX990 that I use as mostly tom reverb, an SPX1000 for background vocals, a Lexicon PCM70 that different things get dumped into, depending on the song, and a unit I'm using for the first time this tour, the Ensoniq DP/4, which is quite a versatile device. It's got four effects units in one frame, and I'm actually not tapping its potential. It's great sounding, and I'm mostly using it now for a quarter-note and eighth-note repeat sound that I can tap in. I have a footswitch that I can tap the tempo in and then make the repeats happen at the proper time - which it does among hundreds of other things." Other outboard gear used includes: an Alesis Quadraverb (guitar and keyboards); Aphex Type II (brightening piano and background vocals); Lexicon 480L (both Baker's vocal and snare reverb); BSS TCS804; dbx 165, 160 160x, 166; Drawmer DS201; Eventide H3000SE; Klark-Teknik DN360, and other units. A MIDI switcher is used to quickly change effects presets song by song; Newman merely taps in a song's assigned number to trigger the change. However, he uses a JLCooper MSB as a MIDI-mapping device instead of using the internal MIDI mapping in each piece of gear, just in case he has to use rented gear.
As might be expected, in order to make Baker sound her best, a strong emphasis is placed on her vocals. "We're using a John Hardy mic preamp on stage on her mic that goes straight to the insert return so we're not even using the mic preamps in the consoles; her vocal's as clean as can be. We also have Summit tube compressors and tube EQs on her vocal and background vocals to get a nice warm tube sound," said Newman. Baker uses a wired Shure Beta 87. Interestingly, Newman is also making use of the new Yamaha ProMix 01 as a keyboard submixer. "The main electronic keyboard player, Don, has seven stereo keyboard modules, so I can get the right balances and textures and effects, simply by going to a preset on the ProMix," said Newman. The ProMix is also tied into the MIDI switcher, changing preset fader positions and such each song. "It's great - this is the first tour I've used it, since it just came out, but I'm going to have to keep doing this because it works so well as a keyboard mixer," Newman enthused. "The last tour I was on, it was a challenging situation to keep up with the different balances between the different modules of the keyboard player when I just got a stereo mix from him. So I found myself often EQing the channel to try and bring out one module or another module. If I'd had all the modules at my fingertips like this, I would have been able to have access to them. That way I don't use up channels on the board, plus it gives me the presettability of the ProMix and it's a perfect function for it." A ProMix is similarly used in the monitor set-up for the keyboardist's mix.
Back at the front of house, Newman said the two main goals he has for mixing each night's show were laid out for him by Smerek. "Don't lose Anita's voice, and don't lose the groove. This band's got an incredible pocket, and they're probably the best band I've ever worked with. They lay down that groove and it is there. It's a real pleasurable experience mixing this show - she's a great singer and the band is fantastic."
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