Prior to production rehearsals, Evans was given a tour of the Sphere’s sound system by the in-house audio team and mixed some recordings using the venue’s proprietary plug-in, which virtualises the immersive system into stereo speakers or headphones. “That gave me a sense of what worked well where,” he says. He also attended a show during Dead & Company’s residency and consulted with the band’s sound crew, including FOH mixer Derek Featherstone, CEO of sound provider UltraSound. On a day off during rehearsals, he flew to Las Vegas to check his live mix recordings through the Sphere’s sound system.
On a typical Eagles show, Evans automates the seven vocal mics according to who is singing lead and who is singing backup. At the Sphere, “The lead vocal is always straight down the middle,” he says. But while the venue’s 360-degree immersive P.A. allows sources to be panned anywhere, he simply panned the background vocals across the width of the proscenium speaker rig. “I didn't go too wide with them, because The Eagles are so tight on their harmonies.”
However, he notes, “You can pan vertically, which helps lift things and give them a bigger feel.” For the song ‘In the City,’ which features a visual of an animated, rotating city block, “The camera pans up and Joe is at the top of the building. So, for the solo, I pan the guitar right to the top of the building,” far above the audience’s heads. “Then, with reverbs and other things, you can throw those behind the audience. ‘Desperado’ has those soft, slow strings, so those can also be really big, and some of the B3 parts can be a little wider, as can some of the swirly effects, like on Joe's solo in ‘Rocky Mountain Way.’ But on the whole, there wasn't a lot of stuff moving around as it wouldn't have fitted the material.”
The Eagles have been performing so long that the songs practically mix themselves, Evans observes. “My job is to not be noticed, and the SSL is perfect for that. The summation is so transparent and preserves the character of all the individual things that you're putting into it, and that enables you to have that great separation. And using the console on a sound system like the Sphere’s, where the system itself is so separated, it's even more so.”
