We were lucky enough to be back out in the US with rehearsals in Nashville from late July, says Donbavand. This was followed by a US tour and a performance at Lollapalooza, Lawson adds. It's been a journey since then! It's been challenging in its own way, digging deep to recover the skills, quick thinking and seamless execution that we took for granted before the pandemic. We found our stride again!
Donbavand and Lawson have been working with Dermot since 2017, with Donbavand doing Dermot's first ever London show at Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen and Lawson taking the reins for a Monitors from FoH tour around Europe later that year. Things quickly escalated in early 2018 with both engineers taking up their current positions. As soon as we could spec desks for Dermot, we took out a pair of SD11is and gain shared an SD Rack, says Lawson. We've not looked back since! adds Donbavand. As the channel count grew, both engineers worked their way up the SD Range, opting for the SD12-96 for the most recent tours prior to this one. For me it is a great console; lovely layout, compact, twin touch screens. It's very versatile, perfect for a mid-size channel count show, says Lawson.
The decision to move to DiGiCo's SD5 came after the addition of backing vocalists for the new show design upped the number of input channels, onboard FX and faders required. I finished the recent UK shows with 82 input channels, 14 auxs, two mono and 11 stereo groups, and 12 control groups, explains Donbavand. His L-R matrix feeds a loudspeaker management processor, with an additional matrix providing an IEM mix for the lighting director and video operator. FoH and monitors have been sharing an SD rack alongside an SD Mini Rack for extra inputs. An additional DiGiCo Mini Rack at FoH handles sends and returns to outboard signal processing, audio interfaces for show recording and clocking for other outboard signal processing and recording devices.
Lawson described their current SD Rack stage setup: Our optical loop consists of the SD Rack fully loaded with 56 32-bit Stadius input cards, 48 analogue outputs and eight AES outputs. Four analogue output cards were assigned to the monitor desk and two, plus the AES card, were assigned to the FoH console. To accommodate extra inputs for this show, the team also had a Mini Rack at the monitor position loaded with three analogue input cards and an AES I/O card. I used the AES I/O card to patch in the Cedar DNS8 noise suppressor which I used on the background vocal mics, explains Lawson. In addition, Donbavand and Lawson use the DiGiCo Con Send and Receive ports to convey the eight analogue inputs on the back of the board to each other, enabling both mix engineers to access any input within the system. This is great for something like a last-minute talk back mic that gets patched into the monitor board, or to allow me to pick up Will's walk-in music without any extra patching, explains Lawson. I had never had an SD5 on monitors before - I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed using it, the ease of access to the large bank of Macros proved extremely useful.
I have also utilised a Streamdeck connected to a Raspberry Pi 4b running Frostbox Labs' Macro Stream SD, Donbavand reveals. This allows me to access more Macros than I could do just with the mix surface, and control my record rig by firing OSC commands to Reaper. Macros play a big role in the FoH mixing workflow for Donbavand, especially with the Kennedy's recent addition of several radio systems which require muting at certain points in the show: having macros set up for these really has made the task easy, I also use Macros to trim acoustic guitar gain for particular song sections.
Lawson also cites being able to patch Aux sends or Groups back into the top of an input channel is killer stuff for monitors. He finds the matrix handy for patching the Cue Buss and Group Buss used for talkback mics to run in parallel, to avoid missing talkback messages. I also use the matrix to send a guitar tuning DI to our guitar tech Joe Grouse, which ducks his main mix, allowing him to tune accurately whilst not missing a beat of the show - big thumbs up! he notes.
The SD5 is great. I'm very much a fan of having a screen per bank of faders for easy visual referencing, which is why I wanted to go for the SD5 rather than the SD10, Donbavand continues. Our tour director, musical director, and artist management have all commented on how happy they are with how the show is sounding. We finished up at Alexandra Palace, which has some notoriety for being a particularly difficult room to mix in, and I had some great feedback from some important people in the extended Kennedy live team.
After working on a new album over the winter period, Dermot Kennedy will be back on the road in 2022, supporting Shawn Mendes on a North American stadium tour next summer.
Press Contacts:
Maria Fiorellino at DiGiCo
Tel: +44 1372 845600
Email: maria@digiconsoles.com
Web: www.digico.biz
Sarah James at Gasoline Media
Tel: +44 1483 223333
Email: sarahj@gasolinemedia.com
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
We were lucky enough to be back out in the US with rehearsals in Nashville from late July, says Donbavand. This was followed by a US tour and a performance at Lollapalooza, Lawson adds. It's been a journey since then! It's been challenging in its own way, digging deep to recover the skills, quick thinking and seamless execution that we took for granted before the pandemic. We found our stride again! 
