With a summer touring schedule that took in venues ranging from clubs around Europe to the UK’s Glasonbury and V Festival, Faithless monitor engineer Ben Milton had stringent requirements of his mixing desk. Having followed DiGiCo since the company’s inception in 2002, he turned to the SD8.
‘I have been specifying DiGiCo consoles when I can ever since [friend and theatre sound designer] Bobby Aitken introduced us,’ he says. ‘When I was putting together the monitor spec for Faithless, I wanted to use the best sounding console with the smallest footprint. We were starting the tour in European theatres, some of which have very limited space onstage – the Paradiso in Amsterdam springs to mind – so it was crucial that I kept my footprint small and flexible.’
The tour required seven wedge mixes on stage and eight stereo in-ears, with the SD8’s two solo buses invaluable for monitoring both. In addition, there were large set of side fills, tech mixes and effects. ‘I needed a mixing desk that was capable of having at least 60 inputs and 24 output buses, and 36 input faders displayed on the surface,’ he adds. ‘There is a large section of the input list that is electronic, so my set list is very snapshot heavy.
The system was put together by Britannia Row Productions’ Damo Pryor, and took to the road for six months. A second SD8 system was added for the last couple of months to cope with 36 consecutive festivals.
The music runs throught the band’s set making the crossfade function invaluable – one of several features Aitken has found important. ‘I started the rehearsal period with a large rack of outboard effects that I was going to use,’ he recalls. ‘By the time we loaded out, I had a big pile of effects units on the floor and was using the SD8’s onboard effects. The EQ is alsdo especially good. Spill has been an issue for me as I have the side fills almost flat-out, but have 16 condenser mics on a percussion/drum set-up, so it has been crucial that the EQ was incredibly fine.’
Gain Tracking allowed him to have a set of input channels dedicated to in-ear monitors and another set to wedges. ‘The editing functions within the cue-list are quick and flexible for writing monitor changes to where I need them. Being able to import and export presets between my two SD8s has been very useful as well and the dynamic EQ has been great for using on backing vocals where the artist might be on and off the mic throughout the show.
‘I want the technology to be as transparent as possible to the performer,’ he closes. ‘Touring the same console and equipment not only brings continuity to the live show, it enables the artist to focus on the show musically, especially in the sound-check free environment of the festival. Throughout it all, the SD8 has not missed a beat.’
A nine-date UK arena tour for December has just been announced, finishing with a huge show at London's O2 Arena.
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