Travelling to countries as varied as the USA, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, such was its success that it was nominated for Billboard's best live tour of 2010, yet it still had months to run.
Fernando Diaz, is a veteran of 30 years on the road and has worked with Sanz for the past decade. Using DiGiCo consoles since the company was formed, he was an early adopter of the SD7, along with monitor engineer Frank Aponte.
"I remember perfectly the first day, three years ago, that Tim Shaxson from DiGiCo came to Madrid to help us with setting up the SD7. My first impression was 'Oh that beauty' -Design, ergonomics - it was almost love at first sight," he says.
"I have not heard warmth and definition of sound as beautiful as that provided by the SD series," he says. " Having mixed over 4,000 shows in my career, with the SD7 I could finally say that I no longer missed the sound of those old analogue consoles that we loved so much."
Ten days were spent in production rehearsals with Sanz and his international band of musicians to hone the tour's two hour set. The entire audio and lighting production was supplied by Fluge Sonido Profesional, with Neotecnica (Spanish distributor for AKG) sponsoring the microphones and wireless systems.
"Alejandro wants his fans to enjoy the best sound and so was very happy to have the SD7s on the tour," says Diaz. "There were over 60 stage channels and 52 UHF frequencies running at the same time, on top of which were processors and effects. But the power of the SD7 means that we could enable more channels to mix the support acts as well, when needed."
(Jim Evans)
