With projects involving Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Spotify and EMI Records to its name, David Loudoun’s company DMZ Live recently handled the recording of Celebrating Jon Lord at the Royal Albert Hall. Staged in memory of the ex-Deep Purple keyboard player, the event featured performances from many of his friends and band mates, as well as an orchestra. The resulting album release, for which DMZ Live recorded and mixed all versions, has subsequently reached number one in the Music Video charts (Blu-Ray and DVD) in four countries.

DMZ Live’s high-spec digital recording mobile was used for the recording stage at the Royal Albert Hall, with the premix done at the company’s North London studio, and the final mix performed at Abbey Road. The RAH set-up used a Bel Digital BM-A2-64Madi monitor, a 2U-high rackmount audio/status monitor which enables auditioning of Madi channels without the need to connect to external routers or audio consoles. The first device to provide engineers with the diagnostic tools necessary to interrogate Madi streams and view the status of embedded channels, it accepts both optical and co-axial Madi feeds and features audible and visual monitoring of each channel. The monitor o 96kHz, 88.2kHz, 48kHz and 44.1kHz sample rates, and is also compatible with both the legacy SMUX and High Speed Madi protocols.

‘We took multiple incoming Madi streams from the venue,’ Loudoun explains. ‘There were a total of four feeds: two to pick up the band audio; one to pick up the orchestra mics; and one was our stage box for all additional mics.’

Loudoun and his team used a Lawo Nova 29 Madi router as the hub of the audio in the recording mobile, with four Merging Technologies Pyramix DAW systems to redundanrly record everything. ‘The Bel Digital Madi monitor was perfect for us, as we could quickly look across any of the Madi feeds for a confidence check and it also allowed us to have another position for monitoring,’ Loudoun concludes. ‘It was simple and effective.’