Grammy-winning engineer Paul Falcone brought The Celebration of Mimi tour to Japan, mixing Front of House for Mariah Carey at the GLION Arena Kobe — the port city’s striking waterfront arena in the Hyogo Prefecture.
October 28, 2025 — GLION Arena Kobe, Japan 🇯🇵
Marking Carey’s first Japan appearance in seven years, the sold-out Kobe show kicked off the Japanese leg of the tour on a special anniversary — 2025 marking both the 35th anniversary of Carey’s debut and the 20th anniversary of The Emancipation of Mimi. Japanese fans, known for their meticulous appreciation of live music, were treated to the full Celebration of Mimi experience.
Falcone delivered the FOH mix on a DiGiCo Quantum 5 (v2025) console — serving both FOH and monitor duties — through the tour’s first deployment of Clair Cohesion line arrays, the company’s flagship system and Falcone’s primary rider preference. The full Clair Cohesion rig featured CO12 mains (14 per side), CO12 outfills (14 per side), CO8 infills (12 total), and CO10 rear coverage (4 per side). Low-end reinforcement came from Clair CP218 hang subs (3 per side) and Clair CP218 ground subs (9 per side).
System processing ran through dual Lake LM44 processors with Smaart v9 for measurement and optimization. Nearfield monitoring utilized Cohesion CP6 speakers paired with a CP118 sub, keeping the monitoring chain within the Cohesion ecosystem.
Mariah’s vocal performance featured a DPA 4018V/SL1 capsule mounted on a Shure Axient AD2 wireless transmitter operating in the B band (606-810MHz). The band’s extensive microphone package included Telefunken M82 and M80SH dynamic mics (4 units), Shure B91A boundary mics, AKG 451B and C414 XLII condensers, Sennheiser MKH416 shotgun mics, Shure KSM32 condensers, and eleven Shure B98 instrument mics. Fourteen Radial JDI direct boxes handled the extensive keyboard and electronic instrument routing.
Monitor reinforcement featured six Clair CM14 wedges with two Clair CP118 subs for stage wash. Sidefill arrays consisted of Clair CP218/CP118 combinations topped with CO10 speakers (4 per side), all driven by Lab Gruppen amplification.
At the FOH position, dual Bricasti M7 reverb processors anchored the effects chain alongside Waves SuperRack running on redundant Titan servers with the complete Mercury and SSL4000 plugin bundles. A Mac Mini M2 Pro handled system management duties. SoundGrid networking utilized a DiGiGrid MGB interface bridged through a Netgear GS108V4 switch. Full 128-channel multitrack capture ran on Pro Tools Ultimate to a Blackmagic Dock equipped with dual 2TB SSD drives.
On the analog side, with conversion handled by Ferrofish, Falcone introduced processing by Empirical Labs Distressors, DBX compression, SSL channel strips, and both 500 series modules and full hardware versions of Bettermaker compressors, allowing for snapshot recall of analog compression. The rig was rounded out with MIDI interfaces by iConnectivity, switching by DirectOut, and timecode distribution by VisualProductions TimeCore. Separate independent rigs running AlphaLabs DeFeedback and LiveProfessor with LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven reverbs rounded out the digital signal chain, with additional Pro Tools Ultimate 128-channel recording to Blackmagic Dock systems.
A landmark night as Mimi’s legacy arrived in Japan, showcasing the tour’s most comprehensive technical specification to date with the debut of Clair’s flagship Cohesion system.
🌏 Full Tour: The Celebration of Mimi — Asia Tour 2025