New York, NY (April 30, 2013)—Eighth Day Sound is providing sound reinforcement once again for pop starlet Rihanna on her Diamonds World Tour. Currently making the rounds through North America, the tour finds engineers Kyle Hamilton at FOH and Ed Ehrbar on monitors, running DiGiCo SD7 consoles and a d&b audiotechnik PA.
Last October, the group undertook an intense promotional tour (“7-7-7”) hitting seven countries in seven days for seven shows. Eighth Day supplied four complete control systems—two in Europe; one in the U.S. and another in Mexico City—so the engineers were able to simply walk in and mix. Although Ehrbar was working on an SD7 for the whirlwind week, Hamilton had to make do with another digital desk and was happy to be back on the SD7.
“Getting back on the SD7 for the Diamonds tour was like a homecoming… ‘Yes, I’m back on my desk!,” Hamilton laughs. “When I was first introduced to DiGiCo, I was using a D5 on Mary J Blige and Lionel Richie. Then the SD7 came out, I used it with Lionel Richie, Janet Jackson, Prince and now Rihanna. I’ve had many years on the desk. The SD7 just feels right. It’s the digital desk that feels analog to me; it sounds warm. I don’t have to do a whole lot to make what I want to accomplish happen. Some desks color your sound and I like the fact that the SD7 is transparent. What you put in is what you get out of it. Also, this console has tons of headroom.”
On the tour, each SD7 is in an Optocore fiber loop with two DiGiCo SD192kHz racks along with one mini SD rack to wrangle the mass of over 96 inputs for the four-piece band and backup singers. The majority of the inputs are taken up by three drum kits and two keyboard rigs, with 24 channels of Pro Tools.
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