Fourier Audio “Still Counting” With Volbeat On The Road
23 Sep, 2025
FOH engineer Dennie Miller pairs his transform.engine with a DiGiCo Quantum852 console on the band’s latest global conquest, “The Greatest Of All Tours Worldwide”
COPENHAGEN, Denmark – September 2025
Fifties-influenced metal band Volbeat recently wrapped up a North American tour, supported by Halestorm and The Ghost Inside, and have now headed on to Europe for a run of shows that will take the group into mid-November. The Danish quartet are rocking houses with their special brand of heavy rock as they support their ninth album, God Of Angels Trust, on what is being billed as “The Greatest Of All Tours Worldwide.” That’s a lofty title, but at what other show will you hear a powerful anthem like “Temple Of Ekur” followed by an acoustic sing-along of Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire”?
Production manager and FOH engineer Dennie Miller is very capably mixing the band on a DiGiCo Quantum852 console paired with Fourier Audio’s transform.engine in a control package provided by Clair Global to give Volbeat the rich, big sound they need onstage. Miller gives a shout-out to Nathan Brandt and Robert Bull at Clair Global in Nashville: “They really took what is a wild request to build a system that is very complicated and bring that to reality,” he says. “Props to them.”
One new addition that’s giving the show a boost is Fourier Audio’s transform.suite ’25 software bundle, with its dozens of plugin possibilities, and Miller says that having Oeksound’s Soothe Live as part of that package is a huge bonus. “It was one of the things that really swayed my decision to come back to DiGiCo,” he remarks. When he first discovered Soothe Live, Miller was dazzled, and when DiGiCo announced that the plugin was going to be offered in the transform.suite, it helped inspire him to make the switch back to the brand and its newest flagship desk. “I’m using Soothe to take the edge off of cymbals and guitars, amongst other things, and it’s an absolute cheat code.”
Beyond the bundle, Miller has also imported a number of other plugins into the Fourier Audio platform, including many from the FabFilter family. “I’ve wanted all of their plugins in the live world for so long,” he confesses. “On certain occasions in the past, I’ve had to reach for other tools that are similar to transform.engine, but much less stable, maybe just based on a laptop kind of solution so that I could grab a plugin to achieve a unique vocal effect. Having FabFilter plugins on Fourier has been huge for me, and I’m using them everywhere, from their time-based effects like Pro-R 1 and Timeless to their incredible Pro-Q 4 and Saturn. Being able to utilize these plugins in a live setting has been an absolute game-changer for me.”
Another plugin that has remained from the Waves toolset for Miller is GTR Stomp, which is a lightweight plugin stripped out of the GTR3 modeler that he uses as a spring reverb stompbox. “The spring reverb is only used during a couple of key moments in the show,” explains Miller. “It’s definitely something that out of context sounds out of place, but in the context of the overall mix makes sense. A guitar player that I quite like once said, ‘There’s no such thing as bad tone; it’s just wrong tone.’ And in this case, it’s the right tone,” he laughs.
The Quantum852 console has also been an indispensable addition to the current Volbeat tour. “DiGiCo is the console that I want when I don’t know what I’m walking into and I’ve got to roll with the punches,” says Miller. “It is just so flexible, and it’s more versatile beyond just user-defined keys into all the I/O options and integration with other third parties. The Quantum852, having those capabilities at your fingertips, readily available worldwide—what a major advance! It’s definitely a step in the right direction as we’ve moved back to DiGiCo on this tour.”
Right off the bat, Miller was pleased by an unexpected surprise. “I almost hate to say it, but one of my favorite features is just that the screens are bright enough to see them outdoors now,” he says with a smile. “I honestly didn’t notice at first. They looked great for the first few times as they started to appear on the 225 and 338. But then I got out into sheds on the US leg of this tour. I almost didn’t notice at first, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks that I can easily see the screens—they have plenty enough brightness in the daytime. No more cardboard sun shield!”
The Quantum852 is equipped with 128 insertable Mustard Processing strips, which Miller found to be of great use. He was aware that Mustard had already been available on earlier Quantum consoles but had only used it a couple of times on one-off jobs. He didn’t know that source content and used it in a utilitarian way. When he received the Quantum852 to test it out in his garage for Volbeat, Miller pondered: What am I going to do? Am I going to convert my old SD7 file and start from there, or do I just wing this from scratch? He had time and thought, Let’s just drop the core inputs in, never mind the administrative stuff. Let’s put the band in here, and let’s just mix this show.
Then he flipped everything to the Mustard Processing channels. “I’m using Mustard for everything,” he says. “I built the Volbeat show with that and widely ignored the SD processing underneath it, and I was floored at how much less work I was doing to get to an incredible sounding product. I think the show now sounds better than it’s ever sounded, and I’m doing four to five times less processing to get there. Every step of the way there’s less path latency, there’s less mucking around with it.”
Miller only half-jokingly notes that if some piece of outboard gear were to die in the rack, other than the transform.engine, the audience would not know anything happened because so much is now happening onboard the Quantum console.
“There were times in the past where if I were to think, I need a compressor for a creative use, instead of a corrective use, I would have reached for something outboard,” says Miller. “Now, with Mustard, there are great tools on the channel strip for creative compression, and it sounds great. The EQs sound great. Between DiGiCo and Fourier Audio, I no longer really need the outboard stuff. It’s huge—a Quantum leap! Credit to somebody, because I know that these tools aren’t brand new, but holy cow, they’re so much better than what I’ve had access to before.”
For details on Volbeat’s upcoming tour stops, visit www.volbeat.dk. Clair Global can be found online at www.clair-global.com.
About Fourier Audio
Fourier Audio is a UK-based startup, with solutions incorporated on many international music tours, along with theatre productions on Broadway and the West End. For more information, go to www.fourieraudio.com.
About DiGiCo
DiGiCo is a UK-based manufacturer of some of the world’s most popular, successful and groundbreaking digital mixing consoles for the live, theater, broadcast and postproduction industries. For more information, go to www.DiGiCo.biz.