When ’90s boy-band icons Backstreet Boys found themselves all grown up and doing a
new Las Vegas residency gig billed as “Larger Than Life’, stepping it up meant all-new
arrangements and a new sound system centred on the DiGiCo SD-Series. And it
meant an unprecedented degree of control for longtime FOH engineer James
McCullagh.

“When I started with them five years ago, the playback guy just gave me a left and
right. And then the guys would ask for some change—for example, they wanted me to
boost a specific part of a song—and I would have to tell them that I did not have that
degree of control,’ he recalls. “When the Vegas gig came up, we originally talked
about doing it with a band. The Boys eventually decided to go with tracks. For this
show, they got their band to go back into the studio to re-record and rearrange all
their hits specifically for Vegas.

We worked closely with musical director Keith Harris and made sure that every track
was separate and unequalized. We got the raw tracks as they were recorded and, as a
result, we have complete control of a fully live band – except that it is all “in the box’
and completely digital with no conversions. Having the tracks raw allows us to make
use of the outstanding audio tools on the SD consoles to craft the right mix for every
show.’

The playback rig for Larger Than Life consists of a pair of the latest MacBook Pros,
each running more than 60 tracks via Digital Performer at 24-bit/96 kHz (one is a
redundant backup of the other, and both run simultaneously throughout the show).
Each of the Macs feeds a DiGiGrid MGO, which provides up to 64 channels over MADI
at 96k. The MGOs then feed into an Optocore DD2FR-FX that converts the signal from
Hi-Speed to SMUX MADI in DiGiCo format, allowing it to be seen on the DiGiCo Optical
Loop as its own device. The only places where the signal goes outside of the DiGiCo
loop is a Phoenix Audio Class A transformer strapped across the main mix, which gets
saturated to give a bit of analogue warmth and harmonics.

“We are running an SD7 at monitors and an SD5 at front of house, both supplied by
Sound Image. Those are fed by two identical SD-Racks and our playback rig is all on
an optical loop with shared head amps,’ he describes.

The system was put together for touring with a firm eye on the house-provided
system at the Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino’s AXIS Theater in Las Vegas. “The fact
that we are keeping everything digital and taking advantage of DiGiCo’s great Gain
Tracking feature puts us in the minority,’ McCullagh says. “Even when it’s DiGiCo at
both house and monitors, most guys are still more comfortable using an analogue
split and having each engineer use the input gain on each console. I get that – but we
had some downtime between the last tour and the beginning of the residency, and I
helped out on some Adele shows last year and this is how they were doing things. I
knew after just a couple of shows with them that I wanted to go with tracks and keep
everything digital and on the same loop.’

The breakout via the DiGiGrid MGOs gives McCullagh and monitor engineer Austin
Schroeder 32 analogue stems via a DirectOut Andiamo, in addition to the 64 digital
tracks, which serves as the emergency backup in case they end up on a gig where
they are forced to run analogue.

The show is using a dozen Sennheiser 9235 with 9k receivers. “They come out the
receiver AES, which means all our signal is completely digital until it hits the speakers,
even my reverb—a Bricasti—is connected via AES,’ he said. “The only analogue signal
we use is for the audience mics for recording and for the IEM mixes as well as our
talkback mics.’

In addition to the audio transport control offered by the DiGiCo/Optocore combo,
McCullagh points to the SD consoles’ macros as a feature he counts on.

“Another simple but cool thing we are doing is sending the FOH talkback to the stage,
and the monitor talkback to FOH via the Opto send and receive, which eliminates the
need for hard patching from the stage box. It’s little things like that—in addition to big
things like the unparalleled levels of control, flexibility and sound—that have made
DiGiCo’s SD-Series my first choice every time.’