A group of shanty singers from Port Isaac on the Cornwall coast, The Fisherman’s Friends have been keeping local oral tradition alive for more than 15 years. The ten-man group tours the UK, playing shanties and Cornish Folk Songs at a variety of theatres, festivals and portside concerts with regular sound man, Sam Littlechild.

For a recent performance at the Wells Cathedral, Paul Nicholson from Midas ProSound persuaded him to try a Roland M-480 digital mixing console (as well as a S-4000S-3208 Digital Snake 32 x 8 Modular Unit) as an alternative to his usual analogue preference.

‘I was mightily impressed with the M-480 and found it very user friendly’ Littlechild says. ‘I have worked with a dozen or so digital desks before but have never felt as relaxed as I did with the M-480. The desk layout was really intuitive and I am so glad I used it.’

After just an hour-and-a-half with the M-480 – with some guidance from Nicholson – Littlechild felt confident in using the Roland console for both the support and main acts in a challenging environment. For The Fisherman’s Friends, the mix of ten vocals with a range of baritone, bass and tenor plus accompanying musicians, can be a difficult balance, but was achieved easily at Wells Cathedral with each different element coming across clearly. The M-480 was used to feed all the delay speakers around the 100m+ space, along with a Digital Snake S-4000S-3208 32 x 8 Modular Unit.

‘I was anxious before the gig because the acoustic environment of the cathedral is one of the most difficult I’ve worked with – but actually it turned out to be one of the most successful gigs we have done,’ Littlechild reports. ‘We even had a standing ovation and massive positive feedback from the audience on the superb sound quality.’

‘We visited the Cathedral a few weeks prior to the event to look at how best to tackle the sound distribution as we weren’t allowed to lay any cables on the floor,’ Nicholson says. ‘So we decided to use an M-480, not just because it sounds great, but because all the outputs have delays. With eight PA sends plus two monitors, the M-480 coped really easily.’

Four sets of APG SMX15 speakers were used for the audience (spaced approximately 12m apart and fed from above) and four APG DX12 speakers on the stage. All the signal feeds were handled by tri-Wi wireless audio routers which made the three-hour set-up window the day before the show and the get-out easy, and saved taking a lot of cable into the 10m-high gallery which runs either side of the cathedral.

‘The show was a huge success thanks to all the linked technology, and we managed to achieve a great sound in what was a very reverberant space – especially through judicious use of the M-480’s EQ section’, Nicholson adds.