Feid Monitor Engineer Carlos “Carlitos” Dickson Keeps His Wireless Rig Lean and Clean With Lectrosonics

“I don’t want to use anything else but Lectro. Quality-wise, you can’t compare to Lectrosonics. It’s top quality, even as it’s compact.”

Colombian reggaetón and cumbia superstar Feid has been on the road since fall of 2022, when he embarked on the 14-city U.S. Trip tour in support of his album Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo te Pirateamos El Album (loosely, “Happy Birthday, Ferxxo, We Leaked the Album”).

Fueled by the monumental success of that release, the artist headed out on a second, expanded tour, Ferxxo Nitro Jam Underground, in 2023. This time, he’s headlining stadiums and pulling out all the stops, unleashing an explosive, neon-green spectacle featuring LED video walls, lasers, and monster trucks onstage. Feid’s audio tech is spec’d by his monitor engineer, Carlos “Carlitos” Dickson, a Latin Grammy-winning and multi-nominated engineer as well as a producer who is providing sound for the tour through his Miami-based company, Carlitos Pro LLC. Dickson relies on a streamlined rig based on a Lectrosonics M2 Duet digital wireless IEM system with four M2T dual-stereo half-rack wireless transmitters, an M2C Active Antenna Combiner, and M2Ra belt-pack receivers.

For Dickson, and for the artists onstage, fidelity comes first. “The Lectrosonics gear sounds completely amazing,” he says. “I feel like I’m in the studio when I work with the in-ears; it doesn’t cut off frequencies, it doesn’t have a filter, it doesn’t compress the audio in any way.”

Feid and Wain, his onstage vocal producer, had the same reaction when they heard the system. “I told the guys, ‘Let’s try it. I like how this sounds; I’m sure you guys are going to like it,’” says Dickson. “When they tried the Lectrosonics, right away they noticed the difference…and they loved it.”

On any live show, time is of the essence. Coordinating RF frequencies can sometimes be a long, complex process, but Dickson says his Duet system makes quick work of scanning and assigning. “One feature I like a lot is SmartTune,” he says. “You can look for the frequency, and it’s very fast and precise. When I’m doing sound check and I’m setting up all of the RF, I get the frequency from the belt pack and scan it, and it’s very accurate. It’s super-fast.”

“Also, Lectro the range is so good,” he adds. “When I go backstage, to the green room, around a lot of walls, it just follows me.”

As both the tour sound provider and the monitor engineer, Dickson flies with all of his gear and appreciates technology that’s self-contained and easy to transport. His small-and-mighty Duet rig transmits eight stereo feeds yet fits neatly into three rack spaces. “We have to keep it light and compact,” he explains. “And, of course, we’re not compromising sound quality. When I go to festivals, when the engineers at the local company arrive, they see all this stuff and they say, ‘What is that Lectrosonics gear?’ They think I’m going mono, or four stereo, or something like that. I surprise them when I say, ‘no, I have eight.’” Often, during sound check he’ll hand visiting engineers belt packs so they can take a listen. “They’ll say, ‘wow, that sounds good, I love that,” he says. “They get excited because it sounds so good.”

Ultimately, Dickson says, the Duet system gives him everything he needs to send his artists incredible-sounding in-ear mixes, fast. “I don’t want to use anything else but Lectro. Quality-wise, you can’t compare to Lectrosonics. It’s top quality, even as it’s compact. The sound quality is amazing…Duet is quick, and it is very light. I’m super happy.”