Andy Robinson (left) and John Roden
Andy “Baggy” Robinson has worked with George Michael for the past three years and is currently one of two monitor engineers, as well as head of sound, on the artist’s tour.
With 15 in the band, including six backing vocals, plus the lead vocalist who has very exacting monitoring requirements, it became apparent that monitoring would be a job for two people. We brought John [Roden] in to do band monitoring and discussed the pros and cons of the potential digital solutions. It was obvious that DiGiCo was the way forward. We could share inputs, have a large number of channels and all the outboard we would ever need could be connected. When Gary [Bradshaw, FOH engineer] came onboard, he decided to join us and we used two stage racks each for FOH and monitors, giving a total of a possible 112 inputs, using over 100 for the show. Each monitor board had two local racks for the outboard connections, so we were running 160 channels each. FOH also had a local rack and a third stage rack, with all racks on an Optocore loop. The channels of each second local rack and the third FOH stage rack joined the desks together, so mixes and direct outs could be shared between the desks, all within the digital domain.
