WAVES L2 ULTRAMAXIMIZER BRINGS OUT THE BEST IN MARILYN MANSON
(Waves | Posted 2003-09-29)
When Marilyn Manson hit the road with Ozzfest this year, the gothic rocker’s electrifying performances sounded as dazzling in his ears as they did to fans, thanks to the remarkable Waves L2 Ultramaximizer, the ultimate digital solution for sound on the road or in the studio. In fact, in the studio is where Marilyn Manson FOH Engineer Tom Abraham first encountered the Waves L2, in the form of a plug-in for Digidesign’s Pro Tools platform. Abraham was so impressed with the L2’s ability to shape and compress the signal without detracting from the sound that he specified the L2 for Marilyn Manson’s in-ear monitoring system. The results were so spectacular that Waves’ L2 will continue on as an integral part of Manson’s monitor sound when the band’s own headline tour begins in September. Not only that, but Abraham says he will integrate the L2 into the monitoring and FOH systems for Garbage, for whom he also mixes FOH, when they embark on their tour in January.
“The L2 makes a world of difference,” says Abraham. “The current state of in-ear monitoring is that they don’t handle ‘peaky’ program material very well, and ‘peaky’ is what rock is all about. Normally, you have to set the input the monitors low in order to create headroom to handle those peaks without distorting. Once I discovered the Waves L2, I found a way to tame those peaks seamlessly. It prevents the input to the transmitter from clipping, so you can maintain all the dynamics of a performance — the peaks, if you will — but lose the extraneous peaks that aren’t musical. The performance in the in-ear monitor is very consistent as a result, which makes it much more comfortable for the performers on stage — they’re not constantly trying to adjust the monitor sound.”
Abraham has also applied the L2’s processing power to the main PA system, using the L2’s outstanding compression to limit the transient peaks with a “brick wall” of pump. “The L2 gets rid of the peaks and that lets the system cruise without affecting the tone of the mix,” he explains. “The difference between using conventional compression and the L2 is that regular compression applied across the bandwidth can make the mix sound small. The L2 lets you keep all the bandwidth and generate a lot more headroom on the system. That translates into a big sound but without the rough edges that clipping causes.”
In addition, Abraham likes the fact that the L2’s digital operation — offering 48-bit processing, sampling rates up to 96kHz, and Waves’ proprietary Increased Digital Resolution (IDR) wordlength-reduction technology — makes for an easy and reliable interface with the Digico digital console he uses on the road. “The L2 has AES I/O, so it converses with the console directly, without having to do any extraneous conversions,” he says. “The sound stays digital until the output of the transmitters. That’s why the L2 is part of the band’s sound now, and part of every live sound system I’ll be working with from now on,” Abraham concludes.
