The group’s US tour consisted of small venues - bars and clubs - where house systems had to be used. Ian ‘Hippo’ Williams, the band’s FOH engineer, explained: "I started this tour never having been to any of the venues before, and I didn’t have the luxury of any technical specs prior to us arriving. I felt it would be safer to look after myself by carrying my own control for the in-ear mixes for the four band members, two wedge mixes as backup and FOH. It also meant that there would be some consistency to the sound both for the band and myself. The problem I had was to get it all to fit in the bay of a bus along with the backline. But this proved no problem at all with the help I got from XTA, Sennheiser and Spectrum Sound of Nashville, who were servicing the tour for me."
Hippo used a Midas Venice 24 frame console and a combination of XTA DP324 SiDDs, C2 digital compressors and G2 digital dual/stereo gates. "Utilizing the DP324’s software for FOH I was able to access the six band full parametric very quickly and easily," adds Hippo, "as well as control the gain structure to the house system because everything could be seen and accessed in one window on my laptop, which was housed on the lid of my ‘dogbox’ for the show. So I had a visual directly in front of me. I could make any alterations immediately, directly from my laptop, and in ‘real time’. This is because the software differs from most in that it doesn’t require you to edit a field then download the revised parameters to the unit. Any editing done within the software is the same as editing directly on the unit."
Nearly all the venues’ PA systems were controlled by bypassing the house EQ, and Hippo was able to use his own curve and compression on the SIDD. "The compression is very smooth for a digital processor," he continues. "And although I never asked it to compress very hard, it worked very nicely for soft compression over my main mix. I found in almost all cases that I managed to get another 5dB minimum from the house system - not that I needed the volume, but it was great to have more the headroom and the improvement in sonic quality and clarity made a big difference to some very old and tired systems."
Similarly, the in-ears benefited from SiDD’s parametric equaliser with EQ to suit the individuals’ ears on the overall mix, plus soft compression to smooth things out. "Also, by setting the limiter you know that each band member is safe should anything untoward happen with the signal," he adds. "A feature I used a lot was the ADT in the effects on the SiDD. This gave me a controlled ‘ambience’ for the in-ears, so in the more acoustically inert rooms we played I was able to adjust the level of ADT to give some life to the mix. It didn’t require a lot most days, but I found that a very nice feature."
(Ruth Rossington)
