Culminating in a major live show, Hard Rock Rising On The Road has visited Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, London, Brussels, Cologne, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona and Nice using an articulated truck stage, a long wheelbase van and just four personnel, so a compact but versatile and fast to set up mixing console was essential. Requiring slick set-ups, soundchecks and turnarounds to remain on schedule ProTechTour and Hard Rock Cafe chose a DiGiCo SD9 for FOH mixing duties.
Showcasing some of Europe’s hottest up-and-coming musical talent, the Rome event used two stages in the city’s Piazza del Popolo. ‘There are two guys setting the stage up and two of us doing FOH and monitor sound, lighting, backline, sorting out the generators, driving the van, tour managing – basically everything,’ says a member of the ProTechTour team. ‘The longest drive between shows is about 2,700 miles, so it’s quite an undertaking for four people.
‘We’ve got very limited space and I chose the SD9 because of its footprint and we can run a Cat5 multicore, which also saves a lot of space. Despite its compact size, the console has more than enough effects and graphic equalisers, it does everything I need it to for mixing both FOH and monitors.’
To accommodate the tour, the SD9’s D-Rack is expanded to 16 outputs, and routed to an Ecler CKL PA with Mitec monitors: ‘I haven’t used a DiGiCo desk for about five years, but if you watch the online videos you can understand it very easily. I think I had to make two phone calls to the office, that was all. It is very intuitive.’
‘We save a show file at each venue, then I load it and tweak the system at the next show, save a new show file for that venue and so on,’ he continues. ‘I’m snapshotting everything for each band at their sound check, so I can just recall it for the performance. I’m using the Macro buttons to do my aux sends and I’m really happy. There have been no problems at all.’
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