World - The Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn Tour has circled the globe multiple times since it officially kicked off in 2022. During that time, the singer and producer has found himself performing at large stadiums to some of the biggest audiences of his career, and embracing a level of audio and video production to match.
To elevate the sonic fidelity of these performances and make an increasingly complex live machine easier and more reliable to operate, the team of live sound professionals behind this – led by front-of-house engineer Derek Brener, monitor engineer Lewis Lowder, and RF technician Diego Correa – have made Sound Devices Astral ARX16 receiver and Astral HH Wireless Microphones the centrepiece of the Weeknd’s touring setup.
The key to any massive touring operation is the cooperation between the members of the backstage crew and a sense of unity on the level of quality to be delivered. “We’re only as good as the crew and we’ve got an incredible crew on this tour who share a sense of pride in what we’re able to achieve,” says Brener. “What I love about working with Lewis and Diego – and this extends to everyone else – is we’re all a little paranoid about ensuring every detail is right.”
“We’re always paying attention to changes in audio and wireless technology to ensure we’re delivering the best possible product for both the artist and the audience,” adds Lewis. “Ultimately, we’re trying to deliver something consistent, but sometimes something comes along that makes you want to rock the boat a little for the sake of getting an ‘extra gear’ of fidelity or RF range.”
The team initially started exploring Astral ARX16 and the Astral HH to address a long-standing ‘ghost in the machine’ that had made itself more noticeable as the shows had increased in size. A barely perceptible audio issue had begun to tweak Brener’s ears and he was determined to track it down.
“I’d been chasing this very subtle intermodulated distortion that had begun to manifest once the systems got larger. I drove everyone crazy with it because I was the only one who noticed at first, but once I pointed it out to Diego and Lewis, we all heard it and wanted it gone. We came to realise that it was the result of the combination of [the Weeknd]’s vocal timbre and the hyping of compression and high-end. This being companded gave us this high-end ‘rizz’ in certain areas. After months of trying to figure this out and swapping things out multiple times for other brands, we were introduced to the Sound Devices Astral and the Astral HH product line and realised we finally had a solution.”
The then-new Astral HH handheld provided better headroom and fidelity for the audio overall, and its use of Sound Devices’ Gain Forward technology removed the need for companding. The results were immediate. “It really sounds like a wired microphone to me – not something you can say for most wireless units,” Brener says.