Monitor engineer Julien Vouillon played a central role in ensuring the sonic identity of this landmark album, delivering a faithful and consistent listening experience for the band, regardless of the constraints imposed by the scenography or the venue. With precise micing, faithful recreation of the original sounds and total sonic clarity, the end result was so good it was used for the live album in its entirety, with no studio remix required.
DiGiCo have designed some of the world's finest monitor consoles, establishing themselves as reference tools for the most demanding and complex productions, Vouillon says. The capabilities of the Quantum consoles in terms of input/output counts and processing power have opened entirely new possibilities. They offer a decisive advantage to anyone dealing with particularly complex technical and artistic requirements and have allowed me to realise ideas I had been developing for years.
The tour's live album was recorded in Odeon of Herodes Atticus, in the heart of the Acropolis of Athens, and was created entirely from the monitor mixes for the band. As Vouillon expands, this unique recording choice could only have been achieved with the DiGiCo Quantum 7 at the heart of the system.
For AIR and their close collaborators, that night became legendary, Vouillon recalls. From the very first playback of the recording, it was clear that we had captured something extraordinary. The monitor mix sounded like an album, already perfectly balanced, but it also represented a new way of producing a live album with the mix being taken directly from the monitor console, rather than front of house. Most are reworked in a studio, often with a reduced dynamic range, making them feel closer to a studio record. This recording preserved all the energy, breathing, and authenticity of a live performance. That is precisely what makes it unique.
The Athens Concert, AIR's first-ever live album, is set to be released on April 18, 2026, capturing the performance with an unprecedented level of fidelity and realism.
The Quantum 7 was Vouillon's console of choice thanks to the intuitive workflow and high-quality audio processing. For him, only DiGiCo consoles provide the speed, ease of use and efficiency required for every performance.
Despite the Quantum 7's ability to manage an extremely large number of simultaneous mixes, the user interface remains remarkably intuitive and ergonomic, enabling fast and efficient workflows, he continues. Access to parameters is immediate, allowing instant responses even in the most critical situations. The introduction of 32-bit I/O conversion cards has further reinforced DiGiCo's advantage in pure audio quality, delivering exceptional clarity and transparency, particularly at 96 kHz.
Vouillon's weeks of preparation had clear results in the recording because for AIR, the whole goal of the tour was to perform the entire album live on stage while staying true to the original sounds, reproducing the mix of this iconic album as faithfully as possible.
From the very first weeks of rehearsals AIR were excited to return to playing live and experience a sound on stage that matched the quality they are accustomed to in the studio, he continues. Long celebrated for their meticulous studio work, AIR found that this tour marked the first time their live listening experience truly equalled their studio standards. It was also the first time their onstage performance fully reflected the precision and quality of their entire recorded catalogue.
Not only did the audio reflected AIR's exacting attention to detail, the visual spectacle of the show was also breath-taking. The band performed every night inside a large cuboid, 14 metres wide, four deep and three high. Made with clean, sharp lines of plexi-glass and metal, the surfaces were highly reflective. It was a challenging space to work with and one that focussed Vouillon's mind immediately.
The design created an intense accumulation of reflections and floating echoes, he continues. It was, quite literally, one of the most acoustically challenging environments we could have imagined. From day one, this constraint required me to carefully select microphones capable of minimizing the acoustic imprint of the space. We used Sennheiser MD 445 for vocals, along with DPA 2012 and 4055, plus Beyerdynamic M160 for the drums. These capsules allowed us to significantly reduce the influence of the box on the overall sound. I then applied a specific processing chain to each microphone, cleaning every source and optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio before producing the sounds themselves.
Once he had a system in place, the set design ultimately became a significant advantage on tour. By transporting the structure from city to city, the musicians experienced the same onstage acoustics every night. For the final concert at the Grand Palais in Paris, a spectacular but challenging venue for amplified music, the team knew they would have to work hard to balance the 43-piece symphony orchestra that would accompany the band. Even with exacting microphone choice and placement, Vouillon found that utilizing Waves plugins was a great way to process each source individually.
Plugin processing was essential for preparing the mix, ensuring it faithfully reflected both the sonic aesthetic of the album and the specific demands of live performance, he says. With the arrival of the Quantum series, the use of Mustard equalizers and compressors added an analogue character to the extremely precise and detailed sound of the DiGiCo digital environment. For me, it allows a perfect balance of fidelity, musicality and efficiency in a live setting. In my opinion, this represents the most significant improvement from the Quantum series.
Vouillon makes extensive use of plugins throughout
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Monitor engineer Julien Vouillon played a central role in ensuring the sonic identity of this landmark album, delivering a faithful and consistent listening experience for the band, regardless of the constraints imposed by the scenography or the venue. With precise micing, faithful recreation of the original sounds and total sonic clarity, the end result was so good it was used for the live album in its entirety, with no studio remix required.
