Edinburgh, Scotland (August 13, 2014)—Before the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this year, a 2.5 hour multi-act concert was held at Edinburgh Castle, with performances by Culture Club, OneRepublic, Kaiser Chiefs, Smokey Robinson, Jessie J, Paloma Faith and Il Divo, with many acts accompanied by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Two SSL Live consoles were provided by Britannia Row Productions Ltd. for the show.
Though the event was headed by Brit Row Project Manager Lez Dwight, with Stefan Krista managing the inputs and cross-patch from scores of 12-way sub-snakes, Nahuel Gutierrez operated one SSL Live for the 75-member orchestra, generating group stems for FOH, monitors, BBC broadcast and 16 personal monitor stems for the orchestra. Niccolo Antonietti used the second SSL Live console to mix monitors/IEMs for the house band, along with guest vocals, guest backline and Pro Tools tracks, totaling 60 outputs for 30 stereo mixes. Both SSL Live consoles were located remotely with only a BBC program shot to watch. As freelance engineers, rehearsal for the Edinburgh Castle concert was the first time Gutierrez and Antonietti had the opportunity to use an SSL Live console.
“The orchestra was using personal monitors, so I sent them band stems, like guitar, rhythm section, keyboards and vocals, as well as Pro Tools stems,” Antonietti explains. “I then received a premix of the orchestra and of all of the other channels that I couldn’t get on my desk.”
Over on the orchestra’s SSL Live console, Gutierrez used channel delay to synchronize the orchestra’s inputs. “The delays made everything sound a lot fatter and we loved it,” he says. “We measured the distances on stage and then put natural time delays from back to front, so percussion had the biggest delay and the first violins and cellos up front had the shortest delay.”
“The sound quality on the console is amazing; its preamps and its stereo capabilities are great,” Antonietti added. “I only needed to make slight gain adjustments to make it perfect and some EQing to the really high and low ends to make it sound balanced for the IEMs. The console just sounded really good.”
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