Starting his solo career in 1983, Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson continues to perform around 80 shows a year across Europe, North and South America and Australasia. Currently taking the long way home from their latest outing, front-of-house engineer Howard Heckers can reflect on the performance of a DiGiCo SD9 digital mixing desk and a pair of DiGiRacks.

One of Holland’s leading sound engineers, Heckers has toured with Liza Minelli and Randy Newman. Taking a console with them on Hodgson’s tour was important and the SD9 ticked all the required boxes: ‘The reasons we chose the SD9 are its sound-quality, flexibility and its size – it is very compact to travel with,’ he says. ‘Sometimes we have a flight to catch after every other show, and the SD9 makes it easy for us to travel and still use our own FOH desk.’

Another feature he likes about the SD9 is that they can only use one stage rack if Roger is playing a solo show, or use both when he is doing shows with a full band. ‘When Roger and I hooked up the gear and listened to it, it sounded absolutely gorgeous, really crystal clear,’ Heckers adds. ‘In combination with the RME MADIface it is also really easy to fine tune the mixes after the soundcheck, or even bring the desk back to the hotel room after the show and fine-tune all my effects.

The console was supplied by DiGiCo’s Dutch distributor TM Audio. ‘When we delivered the SD9 to Howard’s studio, he was familiar with the complete console within an hour – it is that easy to learn,’ says the company’s Jaap Pronk.

As co-founder of Supertramp, Roger Hodgson wrote and sang many of their biggest hits including ‘The Logical Song’, ‘Dreamer’ and ‘School’ and is still recognised as the ‘Voice of Supertramp’,

‘We are both very excited to be using the SD9 on tour and I am also looking forward to using the new Waves plug-ins,’ Heckers adds. ‘That will be the ultimate dream for us on the road.’

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