FOH Mixing: Live Tips and Tricks by Ozzy’s Mix Engineer

In this video:

0:21 Building Ozzy's vocal chain

1:26 Ozzy's vocal effects pyramid

2:26 Parallel compression: Good Cop, Bad Cop

4:57 Why use Waves SoundGrid?

5:41 Waves plugins integrated with the Avid S6L console

6:08 Waves vintage modeling: An old-school engineer's dream

[cutezr]

Whenever you see Ozzy talk you can barely understand because of his mumbling, yet he manages to sound quite decent in live concerts. I guess this is the guy to thank for that!

[eth]

Now there's a man that loves his job

[codyvanhoozen]

This was one of the most inspiring videos to watch, thanks waves!

[StergiosNikolaouofficial_]

Audio engineers lives guys.Take it or leave it and do something else.There are too many informations in our head.Proud that i will follow this path in my life from now on.

[joeymusic]

We love sharing tips too! This is great!

[alpineproduction]

Great video! I love the insight that these engineers provide. Very helpful.

[Hellseeker]

That console is nuts, man that’s like touring with a studio, I sopose if your that huge you want your performances to be perfect, it is the prince of darkness after all.

[elimakowski]

Greg is one of the premier engineer's. Front of house or other wise. Above all, his mix decisions are based on what his ears hear... His presets and signal flow are well devised and studied so, while flexible, they also allow him to navigate quickly and NEVER second guess himself. PEACE

[SinanAkiman]

excellent tips, short neat n sweet.. great vid thx

[RattlinBonesClub]

Really interesting video, I might give the vocal pyramid a go at my next show!

[tomcoryell]

Over use of compression is my biggest beef with some FOH guys. You have these wonderful new setups that can handle a huge dynamic range and the FOH guy makes it have the dynamic range of a 60’s transistor radio. I get that you have to control the transients a bit, but please don’t squeeze the life out of it!

[dopetipped]

Great video. Priceless experience like this can only be garnered this way. I wish this was an hour or three longer.

One question about grouping and crushing drums on avid desks regarding phasing. Last time I had a house gig with an avid desk, pre SL6, in an effort to leave the rest of the house engineering roster in the dust I adopted a groups based mixing style to allow for more surgical parallel processing, allowing to me to achieve perceived volumes that seemed audibly louder and much more full than Straight to the Stereo buss mixing. However, I always ran into problems with comb filtering/phasing at high volumes especially on groups with larger numbers of inputs like drums and horn sections. Any advice on eliminating this comb filtering, possible “dial in ms delay techniques” one can use a live plugin to attenuate? Cheers and thanks for the always great content.

[thepeladeauprojectband]

Many of the same I use. I like the pyramid channeling. I kind of use that principal in studio one channel splits but not for vocals. I do like the waves vocal doubler though. When Live, I go simple (local scene), I do not have a digital board. I am old school so I tune/eq the room via a reference a stereo or mono 27 or 32 band EQ if the band gives me enough time (depends on whether I use my own system). Thanks for the video. Late comer here.

[BeatlesGuitarSecrets]

Absolutely fascinating! Thanx very much!

[TheBleackone]

As an USAF radio/PA guy, I understood all of that. He should try a pre-amp deliberator to provide inverse reactive current for use with unilateral phase detractors, it would also be capable of automatically synchronising the cardinal grammeters.

[BlackenedNL]

I would love to see a new vocal doubler plugin by Waves, as well as a model of the Roland Dimension D and a MXR Flanger / Doubler :)

[PapawCulberson]

I use a version of vocal doubling on my XR18 - amazingly enough.
Vocal doubling delay on vocal and use the main FOH delay to fill it out.
It isn't perfect - but it is a great sound for small venues - especially with the limited capabilities of the XR18.

[kingmixx]

“Once it sees the good comp, the bad comp is bad” 🤣🤣🤣

[paulthesoundguy]

Back in the day I did the VERY SAME THING with multiple analog compressors and subgroups on a PM4000 using inserts for31 Band EQ or the compressors depending on desired sound quality. I used to drive the hard compressed drum sound, up under the more free breathing drum sound. I am sure an Avid console sounds much better than our experiments back then😂😂😂

[amibeingdetained]

didnt really get a lot of tips on foh mixing but thanks