Earlier this year, Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie announced that the group he fronted and founded nearly 20 years ago would be calling it quits, much to the chagrin of the Las Vegas pop-punk band’s massive loyal fan base. However, prior to their official split, P!ATD headed off to Europe and the UK for a final run of a dozen arena shows to complete its Viva La Vengeance Tour, which previously spent seven weeks trekking across North America. Eighth Day Sound, a Clair Global brand, supplied the full tour’s sound reinforcement gear package, which included a pair of DiGiCo Quantum7 consoles for front-of-house and monitor mixing duties.
At the helm of the tour’s control surfaces were two longtime crew members for the group—Portland, Oregon-based FOH engineer Spencer Jones and Chicago-based monitor engineer Jeremy “Spud” Groshong—both of whom have served the band in their roles for the past decade.
“I’ve had the band on DiGiCo since 2016 and love the layout of the Quantum7,” says Jones, who paired his console with two SD-Racks for I/O, plus an SD-MiNi Rack for various outboard kit. “In my opinion, it’s the most analog-esque layout of any digital console, which is ideal as I try to run my show as close to an analog-style workflow as possible. The more I can see at once, and the faster I can get to my adjustments, the better. The extra bank of master faders is key, and the macros are nice and big as well. Furthermore, the processing power of the Quantum7 and its ability to handle a large input list are absolutely remarkable. Plenty of Mustard on that hot dog!”
With 13 musicians onstage—including the four core band members, three string players, three horns, and three auxiliary musicians—Jones notes that he typically worked with nearly 90 inputs coming from the stage, all of which the Quantum7 easily accommodated. “I like to organize my desk so that I have plenty of redundancy, especially since the desk can handle it,” he describes. “I set it up so I can operate all channels from one side of the desk as a simple safety precaution, and that gave me lots of options while mixing. I ran most inputs through stereo groups, and mains through the matrix, including subs on an aux. I had lots of inserts, and multiple muting points ready to go. Also, for recording, I routed 64 channels through an MGB to a Mac feeding Reaper for reference and archival purposes. The Quantum7 is a workhorse console. It sounds great, has fast processing, and is fun to mix on. It’s very intuitive and reacts exactly the way I want it to.”
On the other end of the Optocore loop, Groshong manned an identical Quantum7 monitor console equipped with additional pair of SD-Racks. “My earliest experience with DiGiCo was mixing Lamb of God’s monitors years ago on a D1 when they opened for Metallica, but I started using the brand with Panic on the Pray for the Wicked album cycle and have been hooked ever since,” he recalls. “Having first taken a Quantum7 out with Fall Out Boy in 2021, I found that I really enjoyed its layout, so when Spencer told me he was specifying one for Viva La Vengeance, I figured that we might as well make it a perfect pair.”
With no monitor wedges onstage, Groshong reports that he used his Quantum7 to supply 19 stereo mixes for the 13 musicians and five techs, plus a cue, all transmitted via Shure PSM 1000 IEM systems. “The console performed wonderfully—it was never slow or laggy, and I had zero problems,” he shares. “I used a lot of the onboard Spice Rack processing and really felt that the Mustard EQ was a significant improvement over the standard EQ. On our last run, a couple of studio guys on the tour even turned me on to a limiter on the desk that I had never used but really liked for vocals, which was great. I find that there’s a lot to love on a Quantum7 and I’m absolutely looking forward to taking one out again.”
For more details on Panic! At The Disco and the band’s final tour, visit www.panicatthedisco.com. Eighth Day Sound can be found online at www.8thdaysound.com.
