Symphonica, as Andy 'Baggy' Robinson, Michael's monitor engineer and head of sound for the tour, explains, is "tunes you know and covers you don't, all re-arranged".
"It's the first time George has toured with an orchestra," Baggy adds. "Everything came together very quickly and it sounds amazing."
Three of the SD7s sit in monitor world - one operated by Baggy specifically for George, with the remaining two for Simon Hall, who performs monitor duties for the band and orchestra; the final SD7 is for Gary Bradshaw, who takes up the Front of House position.
The tour takes in a variety of venues, from stunning settings such as the State Opera House in Prague, Arena di Verona in Italy, London's Royal Albert Hall and Royal Opera House, and arenas such as Rotterdam's Ahoy and Manchester's MEN.
"In some of the opera house gigs that we're doing, the orchestra [which would normally be on stage] goes into the pit," says Baggy. "So we remote the orchestra stage rack and the amps that do their headphone mixes in the pit and extend the Optocore loop, picking up local power and only run fibre to the pit. This means that the orchestra can actually be up to 150m from the stage with a single run of fibre."
This is a big production in every way, but in audio terms it has pushed even the considerable capacity of the SD7 to its limits.
"We can't quite get all the necessary inputs onto one desk," Baggy explains. "But the only thing missing for me and Gary are the first violins, second violins, violas and cellos, which we both take as a sub mix from Simon, otherwise every required input is taken separately."
"I've got a lot of mixes going on," adds Hall. "For the majority of the tour, our own symphony orchestra travels with us. This is made up of around 11 musicians from the UK with the rest from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. However, due to logistics and special guest appearances, we change out orchestras at various points, whilst always keeping the UK 11 for consistency! To account for this, the orchestra receives mixes per section: we give a mix to the lead, plus a mix per section."
At Front of House, meanwhile, Gary Bradshaw professes to have a reasonably straightforward set up in comparison to his colleagues.
"I've found the SD7 a real step up from the D5," he says. "It's a similar operating system, so I find it very easy to get around, it has a good sound and the information you get on the display is great. I use snapshots for everything. The FX are MIDI controlled so there are faders, mutes, compressors... Two of the channels have got guitars on, which have got main and alt, I use snapshots for them just to make the layout easier. I love it."
(Jim Evans)
