Held at Antwerp’s Sportpaleis – which has outsold New York’s Madison Square Garden in recent years – Natalia Meets Anastacia saw front of house engineer Erik Loots use a DiGiCo SD7. And as a longtime DiGiCo user, he had no doubt that it was the right choice: ‘I’ve been using DiGiCo consoles since the very beginning, in fact even before DiGiCo existed,’ he says. ‘For the sound design of the musical Tintin, the Suntempel I specified a Soundtracks DPC-II console as the main FOH desk.’

The first Natalia Meets… shows were staged in 2006, when the Flemish chanteuse teamed up with the Pointer Sisters for ten concerts that pulled in 130,000 people. Two years later, six shows with En Vogue and Shaggy were another huge hit and the latest instalment proved equally big pull.

Loots used the SD7 with one stage rack connected via Madi on Madi-port 1. This provided 56 inputs from stage and 12 outputs. He had another ten inputs on Madi-port 2 and was also using all the console’s local analogue and digital inputs and outputs for outboard equipment, local recording and system outputs to a drive rack. Further connections were made to another mini rack, connected to Madi-Port 3. Here 16 analogue inputs and outputs were used for outboard processing.

Meanwhile, a DiGiCo D5 was at the monitor position, with its own local rack utilising 56 inputs and 40 outputs for both wedges and in-ear monitors.

Promoted by a duet single ‘Burning Star’, which Natalia and Anastacia released in September 2010 to promote the shows, the sell-out gigs were a huge success. ‘I’ve used every DiGiCo console and they have never let me down,’ says Loots. ‘They are very user-friendly, sound great, offer a lot of flexibility and easily adapt to any kind of show.

‘The SD7 has many great features,’ he continues. ‘I really like the dynamic equaliser and I do a full multitrack recording of every gig for virtual sound checking, which is incredibly useful on a show of this size.’

More: www.digico.org