London, England (April 6, 2015)—Producer/performer Nile Rodgers and his legendary disco band, Chic, recently played London’s IndigO2; a trio of Soundcraft Vi desks were on-hand to help make it happen.
Production manager/FOH sound engineer John Ryan and monitor engineer Marco Dellatorre, who have worked with the artist for ten years, used the house’s two installed Vi6 digital consoles, while Eduardo Puhl brought his Vi1 (and Vi Compact stage rack) to handle the broadcast and recording feed. The show was streamed live via Living Indie, enabling thousands of fans to watch it online.
For the broadcast and recording element, Puhl explained, “We took analogue splits from the other desk channels into the stage rack down, running optical fiber to the Vi1 which was located in a production unit just outside the venue.” Aside from dealing with the broadcast mix, he also recorded the show as a back up, using the redundant port on the Vi1 MADI card to output to a MADI sound interface, and into a laptop running Reaper DAW software.
Meanwhile, at FOH, John Ryan said he received great support from house engineer, Matt Valentine. “We generally use locally supplied equipment, and always ask for mixers of our preference, such as the Vi6. The workflow was flawless and the local audio crew, with whom we had worked before, was extremely professional, helping us to deliver a great show.”
Digital mixers such as the Vi6 are a perfect solution: “As we are often tight on time, we travel with a series of show files. We loaded a previously saved file from a show in France and Matt arranged the layers the way I needed them, and within a few minutes we were ready for soundcheck.
“Ease of navigation on the Vi6 was just a matter of getting used to where things were on the surface.”
John Ryan says he always uses onboard dynamics but Rodgers’ band requires little in the way of processing. “What you hear is what the band is playing…no clicks, sequencers and recorded tracks, and Nile only requires limited compression on his vocal. I consider myself lucky to be working with a band that is aware of the source they are feeding us, most of them being record producers, as well as incredible professionals, so our job is only to assemble the puzzle, and no magic is required.”
At IndigO2, Dellatorre ran 24 outputs from the monitor desk, with parametric EQ on all IEM and graphic EQ on all wedges, with no gates or compressors (and snapshot on Let’s Dance). “I use the desk’s preview feature during the show because I need to create a second snapshot for Let’s Dance. On that song, there are a lot of changes and even if I can create this snapshot during sound check, I prefer to create it on the fly because my mix approach is live and I follow the band mood every gig,” he explains. He also praised the house support team. “They set all my outs and ins the way I would normally use them, prior to arrival, it was very fast and professional.”
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