Photo above: The view from Cage The Elephant’s house mix position during a recent show at Madison Square Garden in NYC (photo credit: Kevin Condon / @weirdhours)
From their beginnings in Bowling Green, Kentucky Cage The Elephant have gone on to become one of their generation’s premier rock bands, earning dozens of Gold, Platinum, and Multiplatinum certifications as well as two consecutive Best Rock Album Grammy Awards. But they are best known and celebrated for their highly physical live performances. The stage, they like to say, is their home turf, where they are most comfortable, ecstatic, and unchained. That’s clear on their 45-show Neon Pill tour, which kicked off on June 20 in Salt Lake City, with shows in Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and numerous other cities. What those audiences are able to experience this time, however, sounds as close to the band’s recordings as possible, thanks to the inclusion of one of the first Fourier Audio transform.engine units to hit the road in the US on a major tour.
A Dante-connected server designed to run VST3-native software plugins in a live environment, the Fourier Audio transform.engine brings premium studio software to live sound and broadcast applications. The new device gives engineers and creatives access to the very best studio-grade processing on a robust platform that is specifically designed for the rigors and complexities of live productions. Cage The Elephant’s front-of-house engineer, Ashton Parsons, added the transform.engine to the control package for the tour, which includes a DiGiCo Quantum338 FOH console he’s piloting and a DiGiCo Quantum5 desk used by monitor mixer Patrick Moore, all provided by Clair Global.
“The transform.engine was on my radar when it was first announced and I put in a request for it back in April when I was spec’ing gear for the tour,” Parsons recalls. “And just before the first festival dates ahead of the tour — the first one was Hangout in Gulf Shores, Alabama in mid-May — Clair approved the software and hardware for touring. I am super grateful to have had it. So many audio nerds have come up to ask me questions about it on show dates and online once word got out that I had it.”
Parsons has been able to utilize virtually his entire array of preferred plug-in processors. These include the Fab Filter Q3 dynamic equalizer that he’s applying to most of the guitars as well as the master bus. “I’ve also been using some of the Audioscape plug-ins, Brainworx/Plugin Alliance, and Sound Theory’s Gullfoss Live low-latency resonance-suppressor plug-in, because with this band, there’s a lot of crazy intentional noises happening on stage, and it’s keeping those in check,” he says. “They’re a rock and roll band — there’s no click and they have a lot of guitar pedals the band is always changing their settings. There’s a lot going on in terms of tonality, so having the ability to process them using some more advanced plug-ins that previously hadn’t been available live has been fantastic. In addition, I’ve been able to make use of plug-ins that they used in the studio to recreate certain vocal effects for this tour, which they’ve been very happy with.”
In fact, that may be the transform.engine’s single most revolutionary contribution to live sound: providing the ability to bring studio-grade plug-in processing, latency free, to the live stage. Parsons says he has to be aware of the inherent delays caused by the processors themselves, but that the transform.engine adds none of its own, allowing him recreate much of the band’s recorded sound on stage. “For a lot of modulation effects, or the specific slap-back delay/distortion combination that they used on the new record, being able to have their recording engineer send me the preset for that was great,” he says. “It’s a terrific tool to be able to play those new songs and the fans immediately feel familiar with it.”
Parsons says he’s looking forward to integrating Fourier’s new v1.2 Cuelist software, specifically allowing users to recall cues (aka snapshots) over a MIDI connection from either a mix console or show-control software, in the near future, further enhancing those capabilities. “I’m still on transform.engine v1.0 software at the moment, as I got one of the first units that Clair shipped out after they were satisfied with the software being stable, back in May. I don’t like updating firmware mid-tour, just in case something goes awry, but I will be taking it out on the next leg of shows and I’ll definitely get it updated to v1.2. Having Cuelists will be awesome. I’m also looking forward to that functionality where I’m able to click the channel and the plug-in pops up on the screen at the desk with the snapshots and other parameters.”
As important, he says, is the support he’s getting as a new user on a new platform. “Fourier Audio’s support has been top-notch,” he says. “I’m able to have direct access to their knowledge base, and when any small issue or unknown has popped up, they’ve been able to get me fixed up in under an hour.”
And as if to underscore the transform.engine’s own robustness and reliability, Parsons recalls his first use of it at the coastal Hangout festival as he’s about to step out the door to leave for the Oceans Calling Festival in Ocean City Maryland, just as Hurricane Helene was heading up the eastern seaboard. “It survived one beach in May and it’s going to get one more beach coming up in Ocean City at the end of September,” he says. “I’m sure we’ll make it through that, too.”
For details on Cage The Elephant’s upcoming live performances, visit www.cagetheelephant.com. Clair Global can be found online at www.clairglobal.com.
