The nature of The Orchestra's music means that mixing both monitors and the front of house sound is fairly complex, so the onboard effects and the saving / instant recall of scenes are proving extremely useful.
"I've got six main stereo in-ear mixes for the band members, a mono feed for drummer Gordon Townsend's subs and shaker, plus another stereo in-ear mix for him," says monitor engineer Happy Anders. "This is because, at the beginning of the second half, they do acoustic songs from their solo projects and Gordon comes down the front to sing. So he's got wired in-ears when he's playing drums, but a radio pack for when he comes down the front."
The acoustic segment also sees other band members swapping instruments and the monitor mixes are necessarily different to the main, rock part of the show. Not having to fight his way through all the manual changes which would be required on an analogue console is a major benefit for Anders.
"I'm using scenes all the time, we have about seven main ones for this show and it's really useful to just be able to hit recall, so I'm not sat there with big pieces of paper marking up the whole desk," he says.
"We have also had some venues which were really big and echoey. I had to really change the monitor mixes to mitigate that, so it's been great to be able to save that and then recall it when we go into similar venues."
At front of house, engineer John Shipp says: "What I really like about the PM5D, one of its big advantages over other digital consoles, is its preamps. They are so much better."
(Jim Evans)
