Touring their latest album, Junk, around the world, French electro-pop band M83 have appeared at festivals including Coachella in the US and Glastonbury in the UK, as well as headlining at academy-sized venues. The band’s sound is in the hands of FOH engineer Robbie Barr, who uses one of a pair DiGiCo SD10 mixing consoles and a d&b audiotechnik loudspeaker system supplied by Clair Brothers.
Barr has been with the band since 2012, initially on playback/Ableton and now mixing the show for the current tour, while monitor engineer Laura Davis joined them this year. Both engineers have experience with DiGiCo consoles, but are using an SD10 for the first time.
The latest Stealth Core 2 software is causing them some excitement: ‘M83’s sound requires a lot of detail and that was something I was finding hard to achieve on other consoles, without resorting to stacks of plug-ins just to get the initial tone,’ Barr explains. ‘I’d used an SD8 with a d&b system for a show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC mixing Ryn Weaver, and found that the console reacted exactly how I wanted it to out of the box, just using the built-in channel strip and DiGiTubes. So, once I heard that Laura was requesting an SD10 for this tour, I did the same.’
‘I chose to use the SD10 because it’s so flexible and sounds great,’ Davis says. ‘Coming into rehearsals, we had no idea what we were walking in to, so to have the flexibility to expand and change things so easily was very useful.’
Both Barr and Davis are using all 56 inputs on their SD-Racks. ‘At my end, with channel doubling and FX returns, I’m running 83 channels in total,’ Barr says. ‘I love how flexible the layers on this console are. I have some channels doubled so I can widen the guitars, etc., and being able to have those channels hidden on another layer with a VCA in their place really keeps my workflow simple. I also have DiGiTubes on my parallel drum buss, bass instrument buses and guitars bus.
‘As well as the SD-Rack’s 56 inputs, I am also using all eight channels on my local inputs,’ Davis adds. ‘On the console itself, with FX returns, etc, I am using 76 inputs in total. I have 27 outputs on my SD-Rack – 20 channels of wireless IEMs, four channels of hardwired IEMs, one for FOH shout return and two channels for wedges and drum sub.’
Mixing M83 is challenging, the show being incredibly effect heavy on vocals the mix bus: ‘The macros have made a huge difference, allowing me to quickly punch in and out inserts and mute and un-mute sends,’ Barr says. ‘I also use them to send MIDI to my Bricasti and Lexicon units. The band know what they like to hear and what they don’t. They love the sound of the console and especially the saturation we get from the DiGiTubes.’
‘Being able to change things and add channels so easily has been great,’ Davis agrees. ‘The band are continuously changing and adding parts and instruments, so it’s great to have the flexibility to change things so easily. That I can have my macros set up for mix buses and leave three banks of input faders always available is really useful.’
More: www.digico.org
