Lady Gagas Born is Way Ball Delivers with DiGiCo

Lady Gagas Born This Way Ball Delivers With DiGiCo Posted: February 2013 | For Immediate Release

Eighth Day Sound built three complete, universally controlled stadium systemscomprised of 3 DiGiCo 96kHz SD7s with two 192kHz SDRacks eachto handle the year-long production on multiple continents

The perennially touring Lady Gaga is at it again. The five-time Grammy winner is in the midst of the Born This Way Ball tour, a seemingly endless succession of dates that will hit virtually every corner of the globe for more than a yearor longer. The elaborately gothic-inspired production was birthed in Seoul, Korea, in April of 2012 and has received glowing reviews (the best live show you will see this year, per the UK Sun newspaper) and was honored as Major Tour of the Year at the Pollstar Concert Industry Awards.

Eighth Day Sound is again at the helm of the production, coordinating multiple universal stadium systems that at times are air-freighted with the stage set, leapfrogging across several continents to meet the tour.

Each tour system is comprised of two SD7 Mach III systems at FOH outfitted with Waves and two Waves servers, with one running on a UPS for redundancy, explains Eighth Day Chief Technology Officer Jason Kirschnick. A 192kHz DiGiCo SD Rack at FOH is loaded with 32 analog ins/32 analog outs, as well as 24 AES ins/outs for local I/O. At the stage end for FOH are two more 192 SD racks loaded with 48 analog ins, eight AES ins, eight AES and eight analog outs. We are deploying an Optocore switcher so there are three fiber loops for FOHone loop of all three racks for FOH is connected to a Route 66 Optocore fiber router device. The primary console is in a loop with the two respective engines to the Route 66 as well as the second SD7 at FOH in a loop with the Route 66. This enables us with a push of one button to move the entire rack loop between the two FOH consoles for support acts and dual redundancy. At the monitor end is another SD7 running two Waves 9 servers (with one running on a UPS). There are two more 192kHz SD Racks at monitors loaded with 48 analog, eight digital inputs, 40 analog and eight digital outputs each.

The PA system is d&b audiotechnik, comprised of 96 d&B J Series made up of a combination of J8 and J12s (4 x hangs; 24 boxes deep), 32 d&B Flow J subs (4 x hangs of 8 deep), 48 d&B B2 subs on the ground (stacked on each side of the stage and along the front of the stage), 12 d&B Q7 front fills (spread across the front of the stage), with a stadium delay system consisting of 4 x hangs of 12 d&B V8 and V12s.

The system is all-digital at 96kHz, adds Kirschnick, with a complete analog backup comprised of Dolby Lakes and LM44s with wireless control of the complete system. The d&B amplifiers are all monitored and controlled remotely through the entire system as well.

The five-piece band consists of bass, two guitars, a sizable drum kit and a lot of stereo bass and keyboard elements, plus a programmer who supplies various stems. There are 70-some inputs at FOH, including talkbacks and audience mics and Lady Gaga's various headset and handheld mics.

I came onboard between legs of the tour, explains Chris Rabold, whose previous gigs include stints with Beyonc, The Fray and Widespread Panic. I knew I'd only have a couple days of rehearsal before the first show so I went ahead and put a plan into effect that would ensure that I'd be as close to show-ready as I could be once we hit Bulgaria, the site of the first show on the second leg of the tour. I specd an SD7 for me at FOH above all else for its sonic quality. It has a million and one great features but at the end of the day, it's the sound of the desk and the sound of my mixes through the desk that matter the most. The DiGiCo consoles simply sound better than anything else out there. There are several strong platforms in the digital console realm, but this is the one. Period.

I built the console offline on my computer and sent the file to the guys at Eighth Day, who prepped the desk. From there I was able to get on the console in Los Angeles for a few days, where I worked with the tour programmer on some tracks. The desk then bounced back to the Eighth Day shop in Cleveland where I worked some more on it, concentrating on some of the finer details with routing, system integration, etc. By the time we made it to load-in, I had a basic gain structure in hand, my EQs were at a decent starting point, I had a good idea of what dynamic processing I needed, snapshots written for each song, effects laid out Basically every last detail was in place before I even saw the bandand this was on a show with a pretty sizable number of inputs. All of the work I was able to do beforehand was absolutely invaluable.

Rabold cites the flexibility of the snapshot section as one of the main features of the desk that aids in his daily workflow. With a big pop show like this that is scripted very carefully, the goal is consistency and more or less perfection every single night. I don't think we'll ever get the perfection part of that equation down, but we can sure get the consistency through the use of snapshots. The SD7 is so much more configurable than other platforms. You can tweak it snapshot by snapshot, not just globally across all snapshots because automation is and isn't recall safe. This is tremendously helpful and keeps you from being tied to an all-or-nothing kind of mindset. For example, if I know I want to handle a bass guitar input in the traditional sense and just EQ on the fly for a few numbers, I can do that. But if I also know that by snapshot 17 I want it to have a very specific sort of treatment, I can have it where the recall safe feature comes off and suddenly that input is recalling precisely what had been written previously. It really allows you to be flexible

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