French duo ROSAWAY soar light years beyond what many think of as the singer-songwriter duo. Not only do they serve up a multi-hyphen cassoulet of hooky gems drawing on influences from Justice to Tedeschi-Trucks, but both members are musical heavy hitters. Vocalist and flutist Rachel Ombredane studied classical music and musicology at Paris’s renowned Sorbonne university, writing a thesis on post-World War II women French singers. Stéphane Avellaneda is an internationally touring blues drummer whose tenure in New Orleans led him to play more than 1000 shows with Ana Popovic and share the stage with B.B. King, members of The Meters, and many others. They choose Audix microphones for their live performances, Rachel employing an OM7 on her vocal and an ADX-10FLP on her flute. Stéph uses the ever popular D6 on his kick drum and floor tom.
“There is almost no gear for the flute,” says Rachel. “It’s a classical instrument designed to be heard from a distance in the acoustics of a symphony hall or an old Italian church. But I wanted to play it like a rock star, to make it as cool as the guitar. So, I started doing a lot of research into mics.”
How did she arrive at Audix? “After we wrote our first songs, we started getting calls asking us to book shows,” explains Stéph. “It happened so fast. What we found was that sound guys were all talking about Audix.”
“What I like about the ADX-10 is, it brings the flute right up front without too much of the breath noise, which can be distracting,” Rachel continues. “It fully lets me play the flute onstage next to Stéph, who is a rock drummer.”
She picked the OM7 for similar reasons. “I’m standing very close to the drums,” she explains. “I used to have a different mic, and I couldn’t hear my voice. All I could hear was the snare in my ears. With the OM7, I sing very close and it’s great at rejecting the drums. Audix also asked me what kind of voice I have. Coming from classical studies, I’d say it’s pretty powerful. So, they recommended the OM7, and it turned out to be perfect.”
Stéph cites a certain no-fuss quality of the D6 that makes it his go-to: “If you put it inside the kick, you get all that punch, everything you need. If you put it in front and have a closed drum head, you’re going to hear the vibrations of the head. And you don’t have to spend hours tweaking. You get a sound by simply placing it, and it just works.”
Rachel wraps up, “All in all, the Audix mics we chose have turned out to be the Goldilocks fit for my voice, our instruments, and our onstage circumstances.”
