It is also the first time that Gray's FOH engineer Graham Pattison has specified a DiGiCo console. "Some time ago I was working with Gomez in Australia and in one venue I had to use a DiGiCo D1," says Pattison. "At the time I was a strictly analogue engineer, so I had that natural 'instant aversion' reaction, but the guy who owned it knew it inside out. To my surprise, within half an hour, I found it a joy to use. It was so straightforward."
Having finished a European tour with another artist, Pattison had just a weekend off before he was straight into pre-production at David Gray's east London studio. "The band and monitor engineer were upstairs, I was downstairs and there was the optical link between us," he says. "Tim Shaxson from DiGiCo came in to help me set the console up and I was in business straight away."
Graham has high praise for the D5's flexibility when it comes to recording. David Gray likes to record all his live shows, so there was a certain amount of apprehension on Pattison's part as to how it would be achieved with the D5. "I had been looking into MADI recording, but to me that was more a broadcast thing. So, to be honest, I didn't actually know what I was getting, but what I got is absolutely fantastic.
"I use ProTools in my own studio and I'd been thinking 'well, I'll need an audio interface for recording David's shows'. But when I saw the Delta Link solution I was dumbfounded. I was recording 48 tracks from upstairs during the day, then, when the band had gone home, I just played back the recording, routing the signal path in the opposite direction through the same channels with a single button push, and it was just like having them up there playing. It's an amazing facility for both pre-production and recording the shows themselves. I honestly didn't realise it was that straightforward. I don't think a lot of people know you can do that with a DiGiCo console."
(Jim Evans)
