The Venue environment was specified as the resident system by Simon Honywill, system designer for the control system providers, RG Jones Sound Engineering. His decision was justified when around 85% of the main stage acts, spanning the gamut of artistic performance - from Shirley Bassey to the Arctic Monkeys, Paul Weller to the UK Youth Orchestra - had their sound mixed on a D-Show.
Two D-Shows piggy-backed between the main stage acts throughout the Festival, allowing the incoming sound engineers to pre-programme their mix, and these were output via AES into the master D-Show Profile for digital distribution to the loudspeaker system.
The consulting engineering team consisted of Simon Honywill and Diarmuid McLennan, while Robb Allan was providing Digidesign training support.
Commented Honywill: "I chose the Venue as the Pyramid Stage FOH desk because I felt it offered everything the Festival needed - an easy work surface, with all the toys that anyone could want, coupled with the fact that it's appearing more and more on people's riders.
"It was great having Robb Allan there as he had a lot of input and helped us set up the show. He brought two Digidesign Access All Areas plug-in sets so that any engineer could turn up with his own show and plug-ins, and all we needed to do was change the output patch on the D-Show."
Robb Allan added: "Many of the pre-programmed shows we simply dropped in - whatever software version they were written on, and whatever plug-ins were used."
All the channels would appear pre-named, and with preset gates and compressors already in place, requiring simply to adjust threshold levels on the top row of encoders, which the back-up team fine-tuned while the engineers worked on the mix.
Channels were added and subtracted on a laptop and dropped back in on a USB key, while reverbs, pitch changes and other FX the engineers asked for could be called up with ease.
Lily Allen's sound engineer, John Delf, who while being an experienced digital engineer, was using Digidesign D-Show for the first time. He had tried to hire a D-Show in the three gigs leading up to Glastonbury but all the hire desks were out. So his first hands on experience came just two hours before the show where he familiarised himself with D-Show within 10 minutes of seeing the console.
He was another to praise the assistance given by Robb Allan. "One valuable lesson I have learnt is you should let the babysitter who knows the desk help you around it," he said. "With Robb's assistance I was able to set up my channel EQs and inserts, using a couple of the preset EQ's from the onboard library for kick and snare which were almost identical to the EQs I normally use. They worked surprisingly well and I only needed to make minor changes to them once the show had started."
Summarising, the sound engineer said: "All the people in the tower seemed to really enjoy Lily's show, especially when Terry Hall and Lynval Golding from The Specials joined her to cover Gangsters. It was a real festival highlight."
Digidesign European live sound sales manager, Mike Case, said: "The industry reaction was very favourable and the vibe at FOH generally was the best I have ever witnessed - which is reflected in the number of Venue systems now out in the field. We are delighted that Simon had the confidence to spec the Digidesign system, and even more that so many sound engineers chose to use it - particularly those enjoying the experience for the first time."
(Jim Evans)
