Fox-Williams says preparing for this his third tour with Barbara Dickson was the moment he finally realised the inevitability of digital consoles. "Over the last year, I got my digital head doing a lot of successful work on a Yamaha MC7L digital desk, and when I saw the similarities between that and the LS9, I had to order one, even though I'd not seen one in the flesh. To me, it feels very familiar, very accessible and intuitive to navigate. And the quality outstrips any of its competition."
In fact, Fox-Williams has carried the second of the two consoles, a 16-mic/line input 32 channel LS9-16 as a spare, although there has been no need to get it out of its cardboard box. "Since I'm one of the first engineers to use the LS9 as the main desk on a significant tour, I thought I'd bring a spare to insure against any potential issues, for example with the single internal power supply. As it only weighs 10kg, this has not been a hardship." In his single rack are two external eight-channel pre-amps, there to boost the capacity of the LS9-16 if it had to be put into service. "I've already set up a mirror image of the main desk on that spare one, using the memory stick which can carry all system data. As well as saving all the desk settings on the USB stick, I have been recording the FOH mix on it for reference and also running the pre-show announcement from it, cued by one of the desk's 12 User Defined Keys."
Playing theatres and concert halls around the UK, Kinetic's touring production has involved a Sherman RS-5 PA system, sometimes interfacing with the house systems, "if there are big difficult balconies, we use house fills for these. I'm running Yamaha's Studio Manager software on my laptop with a wireless network link to the desk, and the ability to sit in the balcony whilst balancing and EQ-ing the house fills is fantastic. The delays available on every output let me time everything properly too. Although I'm also doing eight monitor mixes from the desk, plus three or four FX for the mix, I have had mixes and outputs to spare."
Fox-Williams, who also has long-term clients such as Steeleye Span and Maddy Prior, has also been using the LS9 to record Barbara Dickson's shows. "I have two MY16AT cards in the console slots, giving an extra 32 input and outputs on ADAT format using optical cable. 24 of these outputs are in use, multitracking onto PC using Cubase. It was the first time I've done this, but it's been very successful and everyone is excited about it."
(Jim Evans)
