Building on the success of the DiGiCo D5T, still in current use on shows such as Cinderella, SD7T consoles have become a mainstay in the audio trenches on Broadway and in the West End (UK) for many a year, with their potently powerful hardware, Stealth engine and theatre software kit capable of handling the most intricate demands of theatre audio today. This June, a slew of the newest productions utilizing DiGiCo consoles took home coveted 2013 TONY Awards.
Using an DiGiCo SD7T:
Kinky Boots – Best Musical; Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical (Billy Porter); Best Choreography (Jerry Mitchell); Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics, Cyndi Lauper); Best Sound Design of a Musical (John Shivers); Best Orchestrations (Stephen Oremus).
Pippin – Best Revival of a Musical; Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical (Patina Miller); Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical (Andrea Martin); Best Direction of a Musical (Diane Paulus).
Matilda The Musical – Best Book of a Musical; Best Scenic Design of a Musical (Rob Howell); Best Lighting Design of a Musical (Hugh Vanstone); Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical (Gabriel Ebert).
Since his involvement designing The Lion King for Singapore in 2010, John Shivers has been using DiGiCo SD7Ts on just about every show since. The award-winning sound designer says the console offers a lot of flexibility, especially with the “T” software, which he says brings features and functionality specific to their needs on theatrical productions as well as a solid sounding foundation in a very compact package. ??
“The SD7T software has added these very beneficial features thanks to [award-winning sound designer] Andrew Bruce’s involvement in the development. Having onboard compression, gating and delay—along with the programmability and recallability of those parameters on every channel—opens up possibilities that you just can’t have with an analog console. It’s definitely been an upgrade for us from that standpoint. A positive byproduct has definitely been the size of the console, which allows you to get into smaller spaces and require less seats be removed and has served as a large financial windfall for producers. For me, from a purely creative and design standpoint, it’s about the capabilities of the console. I’m not one to follow the crowd necessarily, but the SD7T has become a standard of our industry and the reason everybody’s using them seems clear. It has proven itself to be a very capable and reliable console.”
Additionally, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which utilized DiGiCo’s 5DT, was awarded Best Costume Design of a Musical (William Ivey Long).
