Accompanied by UK jazz-funk stalwards Incognito and other guests, Italian singer Mario Biondi took to the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall for the world premiere of his new album, Sun.

With 18 supporting musicians and four guests, Biondi performed the entire album, along with a selection of other hits. ‘The space [in the Royal Albert Hall] is very reverberant,’ says Incognito monitor engineer, Robin Leggett. ‘Keeping the onstage levels under control is a challenge, but the level of consistency we received from the band and guest musicians was excellent.

‘With a show such as this, I needed a console that can handle a large number of inputs and outputs and which would also give me flexibility and speed with minimal pre-production,’ he continues. ‘With 28 mixes, I needed to be able to access functions quickly, but having worked with Soundcraft’s Vi6 previously, I knew it would do the job.’

SSE Audio Group provided a pair of Soundcraft Vi6 consoles for the event, covering both FOH and monitor mixes. Chris Lewis, FOH engineer for Incognito, handled the FOH mix for Mario Biondi: ‘I’ve used the Vi6 many times and it’s built solid, like Studer consoles,’ he says. ‘I really like the user interface and for a gig like this the user layer is really beneficial, I can get where I need very quickly and easily. We had 56 channels of audio, so I edited a user layer so that I could have every channel I needed to adjust on one layer; very useful.

‘I was able to program the desk during rehearsals the previous few days before the show and I already have a Vi6 setup for Incognito concerts, so I was able to use our base set-up and build on top of that for this concert,’ he adds.

‘With the Vi6s, the show was a real success,’ Leggett concludes. ‘I find that with this console I don’t have to dig around when I’m mixing. Its intuitive functionality is ideal for demanding shows, especially when I’m under time pressure.’

Soundcraft is distributed in the UK/ROI by Sound Technology.

More: www.soundcraft.com