Previewing songs from their new album, Oasis played such unlikely London venues as The Coronet, as well as the Astoria, Clapham Grand and Hammersmith Apollo, with PA provided by top rental house SSE Hire, with Britannia Row supplying monitors and FOH sound engineer Bruce Johnston (Bruce Johnston Audio Services) the FOH control. It was a blessing for system tech Dan Lewis, therefore, when SSE Hire's Richie Rowley announced that he could make the new BSS Soundweb London BLU-80 available to afford him greater control options.
Lewis, who has been working with the band for eight months, said: "I did the last UK and European tour as well as dates in the US, using the Soundweb 9088 Mk2. Although the production was to SSE festival standard, when I learnt that there was a Soundweb London available I jumped at the chance to use it."
He says that while it is tasked with carrying out identical functions to the 9088, "it's running a lot more comfortably." Using a variety of FOH PA configurations, depending on venue, the improved DA/AD converters have made an immeasurable difference to achieving consistency. "I'm running a Left and Right into it and doing time alignment, EQing the top systems and delaying things differently depending on how we are running the rig," says Lewis. System set-up is aided by a wireless PC, which enables him to 'walk the house'.
Richie Rowley pinpoints the Soundweb London's other attributes on the tour. "We needed a DSP to do some zoning and matrix mixing control. And since this samples at 96kHz and has enormous I/O flexibility we are also able to run the DJ (who features in the show) straight into the BLU-80."
"I'm familiar with building custom control panels in Soundweb Designer," summarised the system technician. "London Architect works on the same drag-and-drop principles and is highly intuitive."
(Lee Baldock)
