DiGiCo in the mix on Nicki Minaj tour
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Teaming up with Juice WRLD on the aptly named Nicki WRLD tour in support of Queen, her fourth and most recent album, the latest trek stopped at 22 arenas throughout Europe and the UK from 21 February to 28 March.
Cleveland-based Eighth Day Sound supplied the tour’s PA and control package, which featured DiGiCo SD5 consoles for both FOH and monitors, paired with five SD-Racks and an SD-Mini Rack, all on an Optocore loop.
“We used a traditional splitter for some inputs, but also shared inputs via the loop,” describes FOH engineer Kevin Brown, who has also mixed for Chris Brown, Outkast, American Authors, Toni Braxton, Kid Cudi, Joi and others. “Looping the consoles also enabled us to use the Con Send and Receive ports, which was particularly useful when I needed to send audio down to monitors; this could be talkbacks, FX or playback audio from FOH. I also used the new DiGiGrid MGR at my console for recording and virtual playback.”
Although he has been a fan of DiGiCo’s SD-Range for several years, the Nicki WRLD tour marked the first time that Brown had had the opportunity to use the manufacturer’s new 32-bit Stadius Mic Pre-Amp modules. “DiGiCo did an amazing job with them,” he enthuses. “The noise floor is almost zero, and the dynamic range is incredible. Using them on vocals gave me a big, clean sound. We also used them for keyboards. The guys on keys had a lot of analogue synths to replicate the sounds used on the records, and I wanted to make sure we captured what makes us all love analogue synths. We also shared another 16 channels of 32-bit cards that were located in the SD-Mini Rack mounted with our playback rig.”
Marlon John, who has been Nicki Minaj’s monitor engineer on all of her tours dating back to 2010, was equally thrilled with the new Mic Pre-Amps. “I first used the new cards last summer with the Migos and loved them,” he recalls. “On this tour, we originally used them only on the vocal mics, and they sounded phenomenal -especially on Nicki’s mic. Having previously worked with her on various other consoles and DiGiCo desks prior to having the new cards, I noticed that her vocal was actually much easier to mix with the 32-bit Mic Pre-Amps.”
With all vocalists and musicians on IEMs, and no wedges for stage monitoring - aside from two d&b J-Sub and four J8 flown as side-fills - John was manning 20 stereo and six mono mixes on his sub-stage SD5. “With the spill set, I was able to configure and lay out the bank where everything was easy to access. Like FOH, we shared the monitor console with Juice WRLD on this tour, and with the SD5’s great snapshot feature, I was able to use one snapshot for him within my Nicki Minaj show.”
Nicki Minaj just announced that she will be touring North America this summer with Chris Brown.
(Jim Evans)
