Taking the nine-piece troupe's show to 24 sold-out theatre shows across the UK (including three nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo), the tour's 32-channel LS9 was manned by Simon Hall and Rob Priddle, who regularly work on tours by the likes of George Michael, Coldplay and Oasis.
The tour's sound requirements were supplied by Wigwam, the LS9 being set up with 16 channels for FOH and 16 channels for monitors, Hall and Priddle splitting the channels to give separate head amps for each. Diversity and first support act, rapper Aggro Santos, used four d&b side-fills for monitoring, while the second support (duo Mini Viva) used Ultimate Ears UE4 IEMs.
With the audio inputs for the support acts comprising playback and vocal mics, those for Diversity from VT playback and a vocal, the LS9's onboard effects were used mainly for support band vocals.
"As the tour was mainly using playback, a complex console wasn't required. The LS9-32 is compact, easy to use and provided everything we needed," says Priddle. "It was extremely reliable and comparatively inexpensive to hire, which was also a consideration for this tour."
Using the LS9's L/R output with an aux sub to feed the d&b PA system, the set up was straightforward, with the system matrix being controlled remotely via d&b's R1 control platform.
"I also used Yamaha Studio Manager with a touch screen LCD, which enabled the engineers to have the more familiar hands-on approach of touch screen control," says Priddle.
"The audience gave us some problems, reaching 102 dBA at times, although the show format helped us as the audience had to follow the story line. But the tour ran without any issues from the equipment. We switched on the LS9 and it worked reliably every day, which is exactly what you need."
(Jim Evans)
