CONCERTS AND TOURING 55
Rather than a single set-up that only works in perfect conditions, Cook approached the tour as an exercise in controlled unpredictability
“This way, the Fouriers can failover without having to failover the engines on the console too, which would be much more disruptive to the show. Or we can switch the engines over on the console without having to force the Fourier to failover as well. “Either way, Pro Tools never loses the feed, so we never lose a record or various feeds to downstream systems. It’s seamless.” For archival recording, post-production and content creation, that continuity is invaluable. Linkin Park’s music has always been about connection. Between genres, between people, between emotion and between technology. On the 2025 From Zero tour, that philosophy extended well beyond the stage and into the audio- visual systems that supported every impressive performance. The audience never glimpsed the clock isolation, the redundancy switching or the sample-rate conversions that were happening behind the scenes. Instead, they experienced a powerful, immersive show – night after night, city after city.
conversion and upsampling from 48kHz to 96kHz), the stage rigs could interface cleanly with the rest of the audio system while maintaining redundancy. The rigs were designed and supplied by Fred Carlton of Nerdmatics, ensuring consistency across venues and touring legs. By managing conversion and redundancy at this level, any potential issues could be contained before they were able to ripple through the wider system. It may only be a quiet layer of protection, but it is one performers and engineers rely on implicitly. UP FRONT For front of house, the system expands in both complexity and responsibility. A third PRODIGY.MP feeds the main PA, acting as a central hub for distribution and format translation. Alongside this sits a PRODIGY.MX in the effects rack, paired with a PRODIGY.MC that handles analogue inserts. This part of the system is responsible for managing redundancy and change- over for a Digico Quantum 852 console,
supplied by Sound Image, which is a Clair Global company. The audio is then sent to the Pro Tools recording system via Madi and Fourier transform engines through Dante. Pro Tools is used for both virtual sound check and archiving, while the Fourier transform engine delivers processing and plug-in management for the front-of-house mix. “The PRODIGY.MX seamlessly manages the changeover between Digico engines and the rest of the rig,” Cook describes, so that “regardless of where the switch happens in the chain of devices, it is guaranteed to be glitch free.” Redundancy was also a crucial factor. While often misunderstood as brute- force duplication, the most effective redundancy is subtle, allowing individual components to fail or switch without forcing everything else to follow. “We’re using BLDS to carry out failover between the Fourier engines. So if one fails, BLDS loses tone and immediately switches to the backup,” Cook continues. The independence that this provides is a key advantage.
Powered by FlippingBook