In charge of the Uncut Arena was the experienced Walter Jaquiss, while simultaneously the same furious schedule, with back-to-back changeovers, was taking place in the Sunrise Arena, where Otto Kroymann was based.
While bands were turning round within 15 minutes at the stage end, sound engineers were setting up their patches with equal alacrity at front of house. In each case a Soundcraft Vi6 digital mixing console awaited them alongside their two mentors.
"Adlib were conscious of having to put out a desk that everyone could mix on easily," stated Walter Jaquiss. He set up a regime in the Uncut Arena where all show files were created off-line. "For those (engineers) who arrived with no show file I would take the patch from stage and create the file on a laptop," he said.
"I had already created a generic festival set up and this allowed us to mix things around, move layers, change effects etc and save to key. You wouldn't have time to reconfigure the gates, comps and VCA's on an analogue desk."
With 27 out of the 30 bands using the resident desk, the advantage of being able to create offline was paramount - and once the engineers had taken up the pilot's seat they found the operating experience intuitive. "The desk is laid out visually and everything they needed was right in front of them - any fear factor would evaporate straight away," said Walter Jaquiss. "It all becomes easier when it's assigned offline - and the freedom to then be able to reassign later is fantastic."
(Jim Evans)
