The Delirium World Tour's North American dates, with audio production handled by Eighth Day Sound, include a full complement of DiGiCo mixing consoles - an SD5 at front-of-house with an SD10 available for opening acts, and an SD7 at the monitor position.
FOH engineer Joe Harling, who has been touring with Goulding for two and a half years, first started using DiGiCo desks three years ago. "I find that their routing flexibility and features such as two insert points per channel allow me to achieve what I want. They have a very neutral sound, which is a good 'blank canvas' to start building from," says Harling, who has also worked with Lana Del Ray, Maccabees, Michael Kiwanuka, Meteronomy and numerous others.
On the Delirium tour, Harling is also using two Waves SoundGrid servers with the SD5, running MultiRack externally on a Mac Mini via a DiGiGrid MGB interface. "I'm using a fair bit of nice outboard for compression and reverbs, but I still lean pretty heavily on Waves plug-ins," he says. "I like to think of my plug-ins as 50 percent 'utility' and 50 percent 'vibe.'" A second MGB interfaces to another laptop hosting Metric Halo's SpectraFoo for RTA metering plus "weird and wonderful effects from Valhalla and Soundtoys," he adds.
Mike Flaherty, with Goulding as monitor technician since 2013, took over as engineer in mid-2015. He has mixed on DiGiCo desks since the beginning of 2014, initially using an SD10. "I found the footprint was perfect for festival situations, and the versatility of the board was everything I needed. Since then I've used the SD9 on other tours and have the SD7 on the current tour," says Flaherty, who, as an 11-year veteran with UK rental company Adlib Audio, has also worked with The Script, Foals, and Catfish and the Bottlemen.
(Jim Evans)
