After a successful tour through the United States in 2005, Mötley Crüe continues their world tour with dates in Japan, Australia, and the US in 2006. The

HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK: Front-of-house engineer Jon Lemon, a veteran of tours with such musical heavyweights as Oasis, nine inch nails, Beck, The Cure, and Depeche Mode, is currently on the road with the recently reunited Mötley Crüe, and has his trusty Metric Halo Mobile I/O rig running SpectraFoo analysis software by his side at every show. According to Lemon, the setup is fully complementary with his preferred digital mixing console and digital loudspeaker processors, allowing him to optimize the sound system in each venue on the tour in a matter of minutes.

"I use SpectraFoo every day for lining-up the system," says Lemon. "When you use line arrays you have that problem of lining up the bass stack on the ground to the flown speakers and the side hangs. I've been a SpectraFoo user for a long time now, so for me it's very fast. I'll time-align the bass stacks and the flown part of the system first, using music and SpectraFoo's transfer function. That literally takes two minutes. From there, I'll noise the system using the Spectragram page and find any room anomalies."

An early adopter of digital audio technology, Lemon typically tours with a digital mixing console. "I try to keep everything in the digital domain. I come out of the console into the Metric Halo Mobile I/O 2882+DSP and then out of that into my Macintosh laptop running SpectraFoo. I also have a mic for the room going through the MIO. The guys at Metric Halo are moving their product forward all the time, which is terrific, especially since I am a Macintosh user."

Lemon says of SpectraFoo, "It's a really useful tool. You can do it all by ear but it takes longer, and there's some uncertainty. When you know the software is responding correctly and there are no reflections - and obviously there is a bit of experience involved with setting everything up correctly - the software speeds the whole process up. I can pretty easily tune the system in the space of 15 to 20 minutes in most arenas."

Mötley Crüe's "Red, White & Crüe Tour 2005: Better Live Than Dead," presented by VH1 and VH1 Classic, marks the first time the band has played together in six years, and has been one of the biggest box office draws of this year. The current U.S. leg of the tour passes through over 40 amphitheaters and arenas, finishing with two shows with the Rolling Stones. The tour then moves on to Japan and Australia in November and December.

Lemon says that he would eventually like to use his Metric Halo setup for more than just analysis. "I'd like to have more MIOs and do some hard disc recording one day."