Introducing a whole new generation of concert goers to live music, Polish sound specialist 120dB doubled down on a pair of SSL System T consoles and full Dante network to cater for a sell-out arena tour by Polish social media sensations Genzie. Using an audio setup specified by 120dB founder Michal Mika, the company used its own 48 fader System T S500m flypack in the FOH position while a 32 fader System T S500 was provided by SSL’s Polish distributor Commercial Audio for monitor mixing all artist IEMs. Formed in 2021, Genzie is a collective of content creators from Kraków with more than two million YouTube subscribers and billions of video views. Taking the brand on the road, this year’s Genzie Offline Tour gave fans the opportunity to see them live on stage at a series of sell-out concerts culminating in Warsaw’s COS Torwar Arena. “I was responsible for all the audio on the tour,” says Mika, who founded 120dB as a full-service audio company in 2012 and has a background in audio mixing across live music, eSports and broadcast. “That included all the stage audio, such as the monitors and RF equipment, as well as front of house, and I was also responsible for the onstage multitrack playback system.”
120dB is an early adopter of SSL’s System T, having installed the first System T in Poland into its ST1 sound truck in 2018 and rolling out a full Dolby Atmos ready truck with a 64 fader System T S500 two years later. More recently the company bought the 48 fader flypack system used on the Genzie Tour, and a Tempest Control App (TCA) console which Mika says is ideal for touring with rap and EDM artists where he doesn’t need a lot of faders and needs to travel light. “System T is so flexible and easy to route audio, it made a huge difference to how we managed the show and it enabled me to be much more creative,” says Mika. “More importantly, I think it sounds awesome; in Poland, the big events and festivals almost always utilise high end PA systems, and it really makes a difference when you’re mixing on the System T.
“Although this show was relatively simple with six vocals and playback stems, I had so much space in the mix bus that I knew I had the freedom to experiment. The System T has the dynamic room and scope to push the boundaries and still have pristine high-end outputs. For the artist IEMs, we started rehearsals with another console, but after talking to the Commercial Audio team we replaced it with another System T. Although our monitoring engineer programmed it in the same way, everything sounded so much bigger and brighter, and the console’s bus compressors meant that the signals were much louder and still significantly under clip. Even for in-ears, the System T made sense.”
Maintaining a simple setup at each venue, the only analogue connectivity used on the whole tour was for audience mics and for the warmup DJ; Dante connectivity across the board, from the Shure Axient Digital mics to the playback machines, kept signal flow simple and easy to set up. “Dante is a very natural environment for us and System T’s easy connectivity with Dante was a huge benefit on the Genzie tour,” says Mika. “It meant we avoided any analogue splits, and it kept everything very simple. Multitracks consisted of stereo stems, a clicktrack, timecode, and tone for the switcher, and were all sent from redundant Mac Minis via Dante into the DirectOut Maven unit which acted as a redundant switcher. The FOH and monitor consoles simply picked up whatever they needed directly from the Dante network.”
SSL’s VP console sales Rob Davidson isn’t surprised to see that Mika is putting his System T consoles to good use, irrespective of use case. “Working with partners like Michal and 120dB is really important for manufacturers like SSL because it’s how we find out how our technology is being implemented in the real world,” he says. “Collaborations like this help drive our R&D teams to deliver features that customers want and need. The fact that 120dB is making good use of its System T consoles across a range of disciplines, from sports broadcasting and eSports to music FOH, is testament to its flexible design and ease of use.”
