Flying into Hawaii
Aloha Stadium
Honolulu (Hawaii), USA.
09 - December - 2006.
Attendance: 45.815 (sellout) - Support: Rocko and the Devils, Pearl Jam
Disc 1 (74:53)
01. Wake Up (PA) / Everyone (PA)
02. City of Blinding Lights
03. Vertigo
04. Elevation
05. I Will Follow
06. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / In a Little While
07. Beautiful Day
08. Angel of Harlem
09. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
10. The First Time
11. Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own
12. Love and Peace or Else
13. Sunday Bloody Sunday
14. Bullet the Blue Sky
Disc 2 (67:24)
01. Miss Sarajevo
02. Pride (In the Name of Love)
03. Where the Streets Have No Name
04. One
05. The Fly
06. Mysterious Ways
07. With or Without You
08. Window in the Skies
09. The Saints Are Coming
10. Rockin' in the Free World
11. All I Want is You
Recording Equipment - History
Mix of two audience sources and a 'Bono IEM' recording
Mastering: Bob S.
Gear: Protools / Audtion
Sources: 'baker' (Core Sound Binaurals w/bass roll-off + Edirol R-09, taped about 30 feet off left side of stage) + 'Chrisedge' (Sound Professional AT933 Hyper Cardioids + Sound Pro Battery Box (Roll off @ 107Hz) + Sony PCM-M1 @44.1khz, taped at KK section, 34 row) + 'Bono IEM' tape.
Additional comments (Bob S.): First off this work is dedicated to the tapers and their generosity in making this happen. The mission for this was to make a recording that sounds like you are in the middle of the sweet spot of the stadium.
Processes as follows: Bakerstuff was used as the primary source as it had very direct sound. Unfortunately it suffered from 2 people that were constantly screaming. A full master was done within protocols using primarily a 7 band parametric and light multiband to add definition to the vocals and bass, and finally a subsonic filter to get the low stuff that was just adding mud to the sound. From that, the track was duplicated and applied a high pass filter at 600hz for use as a bottom end filler for Chris’ version.
Chris’ version was used for ambience, as the taping position was further back. First step is to run in a harmonic balancer and match the sound of Bakers’ version from 600hz through 3k for the filler track during Bakers screamers. Duplicating the track, and narrowing the stereo image to 80% took some of the distance sound out of it to use as the ambience track.
The IEM obviously is used for vocals. The first step with it was to filter the click track, but because of the style of click it could not be completely removed. Then using eq and aural exciter to fill it out a give it a more natural sound. The big problem with this source was the receiver used to pull it in would loose the frequency every now and again causing static, so this could not be used at all times.
The last third of the show the wind came up and affected both audience sources at times. I filtered it as best as possible, but since it was so wide across the low and mid frequencies total removal resulted in a very thin sound, so in these areas I used a high pass to at least get the big rumble reduced.
On to the mixing. Bakers source was set to –6db, Chris’ to –12db and the IEM to –4db as base settings. I crossed the two duplicate tracks as fills for each of the main tracks to remove the screamers.
This process took 6 months of on and off work, and unfortunately was not fully completed, as the engineering staff at work decided to upgrade the software and it somehow corrupted the file. Due to the complexity of the mix it was impossible to rebuild it and keep going (there are well over 1000 automations). Fortunately I had done a mixdown just to see how things were going. All that was left was the little tweaks, so it’s not that devastating.
The final mastering was done on Audition2 using a five band parametric for pre, multiband compressor to really level things out. I set the multiband very mildly to mainly use it as a soft limiter to keep the sound from getting out of hand. The final phase was a 1/3 octave for final smoothing. Cheering between encores is pulled up.
Comments
Stunning mix by 'Bob S.' using two audience recordings and a 'Bono IEM' tape. Sound is very close and powerful with a phenomenal live feeling, although somewhat raw at times. However, a top notch tape that documents the final show of the tour.
This was the 131st and last show of the Vertigo tour, and it was a great one. The band were in high spirits and the setlist was amazing. It seemed someone from the crowd requested Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses while the band were playing Angel of Harlem and the guy also came onstage to play piano along (anyway, it was a mess). Moreover, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day joined the band onstage to play The Saints Are Coming. Later, Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam came onstage with U2 to do a nice rendition of Neil Young's classic Rockin' in the Free World. The show is full of snippets, but I would remark the Hawaii Five-0 theme at the end of Vertigo, and Pearl Jam's Alive on Elevation.