Dude Perfect's Squad Games Tour Handles "Combat Audio" with Waves LV1 Classic Consoles

	Front-of-house engineer Jeff Sandstrom with his Waves LV1 Classic console

The Squad Games Tour from sports and comedy ensemble Dude Perfect doesn't have a stage. The show is built to run in the round, on the floor of whatever arena it's playing, with two five-person teams competing against each other across seven different games a night - spontaneous, physical and different every show. Mixing it live, at front of house, is Jeff Sandstrom, a touring audio engineer on his fourth tour with the production.

"It's pretty chaotic," Sandstrom says. "There are seven different sets of games throughout the night where the teams compete against each other. Unlike most shows we do in an arena, there is no stage. The entire arena is the stage." One of those games is Slingshot Showdown, in which each team loads basketballs into a slingshot and fires them across the arena to score. "Super exciting, super crazy," Sandstrom says, "but everybody has a great time."

Sandstrom has given a name to what the job is: "I've talked to other audio engineers about this show, and I've described it as combat audio," he says. "The idea of not exactly knowing what's coming next, having to anticipate, having to really lean forward, trying to follow, worry about what's happening next. When I get into that mode of combat audio, I need tools that I can rely on."

There's no rehearsal and no script. Ten or 12 cast members can be active on the floor at once, talking over each other, and Sandstrom's job is to decide moment to moment whose mic matters most so the audience in the seats can follow the show. Layered on top of that is a room full of kids at full volume, headset mics working in front of a full PA the whole night, and the constant threat of feedback, a problem Sandstrom has to solve without the audience ever noticing.

Because Squad Games plays in the round rather than off a fixed stage, Sandstrom doesn't get to mix from the same spot twice. "My front-of-house position changes from day to day," he says. "Sometimes I'm at the center, on the side of the arena. Sometimes I'm behind, on the other side of the room. Sometimes under a balcony, sometimes behind the PA. Generally on the concourse level of the arena, but not ideal conditions." Standard front-of-house wisdom puts the mix position dead center, roughly 100 feet back, in the room's ideal listening spot. Squad Games doesn't allow for that, and Sandstrom mixes from wherever the show puts him.

To keep the system solid regardless of where front of house lands relative to monitor world, the tour built its network around fiber rather than a fixed-length snake. A 100m fiber run is standing in for what used to be a copper snake, so distance stopped being a variable the crew had to plan around night to night.

"It performed as reliably as I could've asked," Sandstrom says. "No drops, no failures, no problems at all."

Sandstrom runs a Waves LV1 Classic console at front of house, linked to a second LV1 Classic running monitor world, with a shared second layer between the two consoles. His input list splits between the show's game and playback tracks and the cast's own mics, brought in through Waves IONIC preamps. Channel processing stays simple and repeatable: high-pass, compression, and a touch of EQ so he can make a creative call on a channel instead of chasing a signal problem. But he still has the freedom to use additional Waves plugins when the need arises. "Because the LV1 Classic is built around Waves plug-ins, I always have the tools I need to make the inputs sound great, no matter how limiting the environment may be," he adds.

"Another great aspect of the platform is that I don't have to worry about sending signal outside the console," he says. "Everything's built in, so the headache of an external processor failing just isn't something I have to think about. That frees me up for creativity."

Sandstrom shares the rig with Michael French, Squad Games' monitor engineer, who runs his own LV1 Classic on the show. Michael was new to the LV1 platform coming into this tour. "Our monitor engineer had never used the platform before," Sandstrom says. "It was all new to him, but the ease of use got him up to speed quickly. Even the cast have commented on how good things sound."

For Sandstrom, the case for the console is the show itself: a format with no script, no fixed position, and no second take if something goes wrong. "When I get into combat-audio mode, I need tools I can rely on so reliability isn't something I'm worried about," he says. "This is my nineteenth show on this system, and it's been that reliable the whole way."

Video: "What is 'Combat Audio'?! Inside Dude Perfect's Live Mix": youtu.be/uP5t_sBM9vw.