Gary Langan, who has spent a great deal of time deep inside the recording aspect of The War of the Worlds, is in charge of the master FOH console, whilst experienced D5 operator Richard Sharratt controls the other. Robin Fox sits at monitors and Ali Viles is designated the challenging assignment of system technician.
"I think Jeff had been secretly planning this stage show for more than 20 years," says Langan. "But it's only now that technically there's the wherewithal for him to be able to bring some of his ideas to life.
"As a sound engineer, there's no way I would have attempted this without some sort of digital help. The D5's total recall, as I term it, and continual updating are fantastic. 10 years ago, it would have been a nightmare: you would have had to have three or four analogue consoles for me alone and it would have been an unwieldy mess."
Langan's main D5 features 48 tracks of playback and 48 live band inputs, while Sharratt's handles 48 string mics and eight vocal mics which then 'subs' into the master D5 and outputs through the matrix to the main loudspeaker system.
"The show demands that we mix certain elements in 5.1 surround but keep other parts just in the stereo domain," explains Ali Viles. "So on D5 we have the ability to route to the main left/right and also route to a multi channel buss, making it possible to move things in a 5.1 scenario around the arena. It sometimes feels like we are mixing two shows in multiple formats at the same time on one DiGiCo console.
"The monitor D5 takes an analogue split of the inputs. Robin is taking full advantage of the D5's power as well - he's running 112 inputs and there's loads of onboard effects stuff going on, so he's pretty busy."
In terms of the D5 Live itself, Gary is unequivocal in his praise: "I think it's brilliant, I really do," he says. "It sounds good and there's been some really clever thought put into its software. There are things here that I would want to implement into a studio console. It's also very robust. I won't say nothing's gone wrong, because that would be tempting fate, but we're on gig eight and it's been fantastic."
One of the requirements for the tour was that a multitrack recording should be made of each show. At the end of the tour, Langan returned to the studio to mix a DVD of the tour and wanted to have a selection of different takes to choose from. Production had booked a sound mobile as part of the DVD shoot at Wembley, but Langan wanted even more options available to him.
The re-mastering of the original album, and all subsequent work on the project, has been done in Protools so that was the format they wanted the daily recordings to be supplied in. Ali Viles continues: "We put together a Protools HD system that enabled us to record 56 inputs direct from the D5's MADI stream, whilst also recording another 16 buss outputs from the D5 Live via AES/EBU. The system slaved to the show's time code and virtually ran itself each night, seamlessly recording several hours of multi track audio per show."
Now, back in the studio, this has proved invaluable to Langan and his team. "The Protools recordings have dropped seamlessly back into our original session in a way that the material from the sound mobile did not."
"The system is so intuitive, ergonomically brilliant and the layering is fantastic. I didn't get it right first time, but now I can fly around it. And boy it's fast!"
Ultimately, however, it is what audiences make of the show that matters most. And it appears that the three D5 Lives have resolutely delivered. Gary grins. "We had so many people come up to FOH at the end of the show just gushing, saying what an amazing time t
