In the run-up to the recent Commonwealth Games in Glasgow the BBC broadcast Live at Edinburgh Castle, a 2.5-hour multi-act concert that included Culture Club, the Kaiser Chiefs and Smokey Robinson. While the acts were backed by a 12-piece house band and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the television broadcast was served by two SSL Live mixing consoles were provided by Britannia Row Productions.

Nahuel Gutierrez was at one console for the 75-member orchestra, generating group stems for FOH, monitors, BBC broadcast and 16 personal monitor stems for the orchestra, with Niccolo Antonietti using the second to mix monitors/IEMs for the house band, along with guest vocals, guest backline and pre-recorded tracks from a Pro Tools system. Both consoles were located remotely, with only a BBC programme shot for the engineering team to watch. As freelance engineers, rehearsal for the Edinburgh Castle concert was the first time Gutierrez and Antonietti had used an SSL Live console.

Antonietti’s console handled the house band – drums, bass, guitars, two keyboards, percussion and three backing vocals, as well as director Mike Stevens’ keyboard and guitars. He also controlled the handheld microphones for guests, ambient microphones, intercoms, BBC feeds and 16 channels of Pro Tools, bringing Antonietti’s desk to 120 input channels. The two SSL Live consoles were linked via Madi to feed stem subgroups back and forth.

‘The orchestra was using personal monitors, so I sent them band stems, like guitar, rhythm section, keyboards and vocals, as well as Pro Tools stems,’ Antonietti explains. ‘I then received a premix of the orchestra and of all of the other channels that I couldn’t get on my desk.

‘The stems are especially important when you have that much to mix, with guests coming and going that you have to mix for and keep track of in such little time,’ he adds. ‘I could just mix the guest IEMs using stems, so it was really, really helpful. It was one of the best features on SSL Live for this show, because you can have a lot of channels that don’t need full processing.’

On the orchestra console, Gutierrez used channel delay to synchronise the inputs: ‘The delays made everything sound a lot fatter and we loved it,’ he says. ‘We measured the distances on stage and then put natural time delays from back to front, so percussion had the biggest delay and the first violins and cellos up front had the shortest.

With minimal time to familiarise themselves with SSL Live at southwest London’s CATO Rehearsal space, Antonietti and Gutierrez had no trouble getting a feel for the console: ‘I felt very comfortable because SSL sent product specialists to help us out; after they showed me how to get into the system, it was really easy,’ Antonietti reports. ‘We set up on Wednesday before the show on Saturday, so we only had a few days for the guests to rehearse with the orchestra and band. The quick learning curve of the SSL helped made rehearsals simple.

‘The sound quality on the console is amazing; its preamps and its stereo capabilities are great,’ he says. ‘I only needed to make slight gain adjustments to make it perfect and some EQ’ing to the really high and low ends to make it sound balanced for the IEMs. The console just sounded really good.’

‘The most amazing thing about the desk is the sound,’ Gutierrez agrees. ‘I’ve never played with an SSL before and the sound is crisp and very, very nice. It also has a wider stereo image than other desks. Don’t ask me why; that’s what I’m hearing with my ears.

‘One of the things that really amazed me was the solo feature – being able to route the solos on any output, once you get your head around it, is really brilliant. Not having to preset the solo is really amazing.’

More: www.britanniarow.com
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