Coldplay's busy summer includes headline appearances at Rock am Ring / Rock im Park (Germany), Jammin' (Italy), Pinkpop (Netherlands), Glastonbury and T In The Park (UK), Where The Action Is (Sweden), Open'er (Poland), Rock Werchter (Belgium), Main Square (France), Optimus Alive (Portugal), BBK Live (Spain), Oxegen (Ireland), Fuji Rock (Japan) and Rock In Rio (Brazil).
Daniel worked closely with Wigwam Acoustics to put together a new, bespoke rig for the festival tour, designed around a DiGiCo SD7 console.
"We have a really good relationship with Dan and Tony Smith, the band's head of sound, so we were happy to spend time working with them to put together what is effectively a bespoke system," says Wigwam's Alex Hadjigeorgiou. "Everything has to be absolutely right for them to put on the best show. As a hire company, it's really good to work with people whose priority is quality rather than just cost."
The band's relentless touring schedule meant that they didn't have a major break for 18 months. But there was finally time for one earlier this year, so Dan Smith headed to Wigwam to discuss a new system.
"The band uses a lot of different instruments and Dan has a dedicated channel for each one. Even the bell on Viva la Vida has its own channel, despite only being used on one song. The result was that the previous console was full up," says Hadjigeorgiou.
"Because Dan is also heavily involved in the band's recordings, he knows exactly how he wants them to sound live," Alex continues. "He is very meticulous, so he came to us and spent time listening to a lot of different options. It was a good window of opportunity to go right back to basics and effectively start from scratch.
"With DiGiCo consoles now being compatible with Waves, the SD7's combination of high channel count and redundancy was ideal."
(Jim Evans)
