Girl band All Saints' comeback tour played ten dates in Academies around the UK this October. It was their first headline tour in over a decade and, with most dates being completely sold-out, space was at a premium. DiGiCo SD9s (supplied by Wigwam Acoustics) were the solution, with their small footprint providing the perfect choice for both Front of House engineer Jonny Williams and monitor engineer Darryl Walsh.
DiGiCo is always my first choice for anything I mix. I've used them for years, know them inside out, and they sound great, says Jonny. With the new Stealth Core 2 software upgrades, their flexibility has been expanded to provide an even more powerful mixing facility in a frame far smaller than you'd usually expect, so the SD9 seemed like a great choice for this tour.
For me, DiGiCo was the only choice, as I needed the routing flexibility that the SD range offers, Darryl adds. I would have been happy to use any model but, with budgets being a major driving force, we went for what was both a practical and affordable option. The Stealth Core 2 upgrade means that the SD9 is really powerful and for monitors I like to work in layers, so a big surface isnt a big requirement.
On stage, Darryl set up inputs for four musicians, the four artists and a tech, all requiring different stereo mixes as standard.
So that we could get the cleanest mixes for the band and the girls, I needed a lot more than just a standard desk, he explains. This is where a DiGiCo console really does stand out. With All Saints, we have four open mics on stage, which tend to pick up a lot of ambient noise and theres a lot of dynamic range in there, too.
With each singer needing to hear each other, rather than just route the singers' vocals to everyone's in ears, Darryl utilised four stereo vocal groups, each comprising of every other singer.
For example, Mels mix would have the band, her vocal, then a stereo group of Nic, Nat and Shaznay, with the process repeated for each singer, he explains. I also had a vocal group of everyone for the band, so that I could process the group vocals without affecting the singers directly. This meant I could use Dynamic EQ to filter out the high spill, cymbals, etc - a bit like a noise gate - and I could compress the vocals together, so whoever was singing always sat on top of their own mix, without having to be too compressed.
The results where fantastic. I cant think of any other desk where this would be so easily achievable. It also meant I could do a processed drum group, guitar group and keyboard group for the girls. In total my set up used 16 stereo mixes and seven mono for FX sends and the drum sub, or 39 busses in total. Add in the various splits, the talk system FX and group returns and it was around 74 mono and stereo input channels combined.
On my SD9, I had 48 inputs plus some split channels, FX returns, shout mics and miscellaneous bits for testing the system each day, so a total of around 60 channels coming in over a number of layers, says Jonny. That provided me with enough channels and busses to do everything I would usually do on a (physically) much larger console. I use quite a lot of busses, too, but it was no problem with the new upgrade installed.
On every SD9 I use, I always set up my left-hand bank as layers of inputs, and the right side as busses and control groups. I always like to have a dedicated master section - I guess there's still a bit of analogue mentality that I'm trying to cling on to! and I was running five stereo FX and three mono FX, all sent via auxiliaries, but returned to input channels. I had six stereo groups, eight matrices, and 12 control groups all in use, so although I'd already used quite a few, I still had 14 busses to spare.
Jonny and Darryl had two D-Racks on stage running through two DiGiCo Little Red Boxes to make life even simpler. The first D-Rack was situated under the drum riser and took the inputs from all live instruments. The second was rack-mounted in monitor world and took inputs from the playback system and radio mics.
This was all hard wired into the rack, so all we had to do every day is plug the backline looms and mics/DIs on stage and we had it nailed! says Jonny. The monitor console had full control, and I had gain tracking engaged at FOH.
Jonny says he chooses DiGiCo simply because they do things other manufacturers don't do.
Trying to keep everything in a sensible order/layout can sometimes be a challenge on an All Saints show, due to the number of stereo inputs we have, he says. However, it's easy on a DiGiCo because I can just set up stereo channels and everything fits perfectly into banks of 12. The real beauty of a DiGiCo is that you can just move anything anywhere, so when someone decides to add in something extra mid-tour, you just bang it on the end and then move the channel to wherever you want it.
If you think of a simple mix, I can get some gains set, throw the faders up and I'll be in the ball park - I did that on an SD10 at a festival this summer and it sounded great! When I start getting into the fine tuning of the mix I'll start looking at the routing with specific attention paid to how I use the groups. I'm a big fan of parallel drum compression when mixing pop, so I'll get my drum sound rocking via use of that. I'll set up two stereo groups; one for the dry' drum sound and one for the compressed sound. Both groups are then controlled by a Control Group. I have multiple guitar channels, so they go into a stereo group, too, with a compressor over the top. This is where a DiGiCo becomes extremely useful; the rest of my inputs (aside from vocals) PLUS my drum and guitar groups then get sent into a Band' group! Now I have all my music' channels in one group, with a Control Group assigned
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Girl band All Saints' comeback tour played ten dates in Academies around the UK this October. It was their first headline tour in over a decade and, with most dates being completely sold-out, space was at a premium. DiGiCo SD9s (supplied by Wigwam Acoustics) were the solution, with their small footprint providing the perfect choice for both Front of House engineer Jonny Williams and monitor engineer Darryl Walsh.
