United Kingdom (November 21, 2012)— Bryony October, best-known for her work as FOH engineer and production manager for the Noisettes, spent the summer on the road mixing British singer/songwriter Delilah on a new Soundcraft Si Performer digital console.
While she didn’t need or make use of the desk’s ability to control lighting via the DMX interface built-in to the Si Performer, October still needed 31 inputs for the 5-piece band in order to handle the house mix and monitor foldback from front of house
As one of the first engineers to take the new desk on the road, October found the Si Performer’s FaderGlow and color backlit name displays on every channel useful. “It has screens on each channel, so you can see the compressors and gates, and the FaderGlow changes color so you never make a mistake when moving from FOH to monitor mixes,” October said. “It also turns the system EQ red so you can clearly see the graphic.”
“The touch screen is easy to get around quickly, with the one-touch easy mix with buttons across the top of the faders,” October added. “Finally I love the magnetic iPad notes pad which is very handy.”
The entire show mix is placed on the desk’s top layer, with October sub-mixing the drums to a group buss and also Delilah’s vocals and some of the drums to the Lexicon effects.
As for Delilah’s personal monitor mix, she said, “It’s all about the vocal level, reverbs [the desk contains four stereo Lexicon effects engines] and a low mix of everything else. It’s about creating an open and ambient sound so that the artist feels part of the show and can interact with the audience.”
Although October has not had the opportunity to use the DMX interface, the sound engineer notes that “every single venue I arrived at knew that this was the desk with DMX.”
HARMAN
www.harman.com
