Nearer home after touring in Europe, Canadian indie pop band Stars are playing a various theatre-sized venues in Canada and North America. With audience capacities from an intimate 500 up to 2,750, the the DiGiCo SD8 digital console at front of house is making life sweet for FOH engineer Kevin Madigan. ‘I already knew the SD8 would sound great,’ he says. ‘And it fit the bill perfectly for this tour – great sound quality, functional layout, small footprint, and suitable input capabilities.’
Madigan has recently finished an extensive tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash using a D5 supplied via DiGiCo’s US and Canadian distributors (Group one and Gerr Audio respectively), and regarded the SD8 as a perfect fit for the Stars tour.
He uses 38 inputs for the SD8’s 60 available flexi channels for the band and picks up ‘racks and stacks’ daily: ‘I usually run four or five outputs; left, right, sub, front fill and sometimes a balcony feed, then I time align and EQ the system all within the SD8’ he explains. ‘The FX on the SD8 are really a leap beyond what they were on earlier consoles, which means I don’t need to carry anything else.
‘There seems to be an improvement in the overall clarity and separation that can be achieved,’ he adds. ‘The dynamic EQ and compression are great. Overall, I’m really happy.’
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