Fourier Audio transform.engine brings processing to Hans Zimmer Live — TPi

On November 20, 2024By Littum

Fourier_Zimmer — “They’ve obviously thought long and hard about making a product that not only works in the showroom, but works out in the field,” says FOH engineer and system designer, Colin Pink. Photo: Craig Mitchell

Award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer brought his Hans Zimmer Live tour of North America this fall with arena dates across the US and Canada, supported by Orlando, Florida-based LMG Touring.

The audience joined him on a journey through a number of beloved scores from the multiple Oscar and Grammy winner’s career, including Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, The Lion King, The Last Samuraiand Dune. “I am thrilled to return to perform in North America with my wonderful band and excited to share this phenomenal show,” Zimmer said on his tour’s website. “At the end of the day, music connects us all, and I promise you this: we will always play our best, from the heart.”

Helping Zimmer and company make that artistic connection was the performance’s sound, which approached studio quality. That’s because the tour’s L-Acoustics K1 PA system benefited from studio-level processing, thanks to the integration of Fourier Audio’s transform.engine, a Dante-connected server designed to run VST3-native software plugins in a live environment, bringing premium study software. for live sound applications.

“Transform.engine gives you the flexibility to use any plugin you like,” said Colin Pink, FOH Engineer and System Designer. “Previously, with plugin servers, you’ve been quite limited by brand, and that’s why this is such a game changer, because you can use pretty much any VST3 plugin you want and get full functionality from each, with virtually no latency.” In fact, the tour used two transform.engines: one as the primary and one paired with the redundant B engine on Pink’s DiGiCo Quantum7T FOH console.

On the tour, Pink used TC Electronic M6000 reverb and mastering plugins, and transform.engine allowed him to exploit them to their maximum potential. “A lot of engineers put a mastering chain on their master bus before it goes out,” he explained. “I tend to treat these symphonic shows very differently because you have a band, percussion, an orchestra and playback, and they all have very different dynamic ranges. I have four separate mastering buses to try to match the dynamics of each of these sections so you get a cohesive whole. If you just put it through one, you tend to over-squash the drums or not bring out enough low-level detail in the orchestra. Keeping it separate gives you a lot more flexibility to match the dynamics of each section.And that’s more important in a hybrid orchestral show than if you just stick to one genre.Having multiple plugins on transform.engine means I can access all aspects of these processors at all times. I don’t have to worry about bandwidth.”

“Also, if you were in a studio, you would never put a microphone closer than four feet from a violin,” he continued. “Live, you need a lot more control and you want to reduce the waste as much as possible, so you close everything and use clip-on microphones. The problem when you do that is that you increase the dynamic range of that instrument disproportionately in terms of what your ears expect an orchestra to sound like.So I use the FabFilter Pro-Q 3 plugins quite a lot to calm down the dynamic range and the transform.engines are great because they have enough processing height to give allowing you to use quite a lot of processing without running out of steam .Overall it’s brilliant to have dual power supplies along with main and redundant Dante networks.They’ve obviously thought long and hard about the reliability and flexibility of a product , which not only works in the showroom, but works out in the field.”

Pink just started using Fourier Audio’s new Cuelists feature, part of transform.engine’s v.1.2 software update. He added it towards the end of the North American tour, but immediately saw some of the benefits. “Cuelists are a wonderful feature,” he agreed. “It gives you great flexibility because you can seamlessly change the parameters of your plugins, either manually or automatically, meaning you don’t have to think about it during the show, freeing up your time to do the important work of mixing. For that reason alone, I’d say Fourier Audio has a great product here.”

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