M°rch-Kerrison became the first engineer to specify a Midas XL8 live performance system for an international tour. The system has been provided by SSE Hire, a member of the M7 Group set up to facilitate XL8 hire in the UK.
"I made it very clear that I had certain parameters, and one of those was the Midas XL8," says M°rch-Kerrison. "I never thought about being the first; I just knew this was the tool I wanted to use. The great things about Midas are reliability, commitment to redundancy, and the fact it has to work every day - it should be able to fall out the back of a truck and still work.
"I'm a long-term Midas user. The Midas sound has become part of what I expect to hear when I push the faders up. Whenever I use any other console, I find myself not quite at home with how it sounds because I've been using Midas consoles for 15 years. And because I wanted the show to be very dynamic with lots of changes, it was going to be much easier and more efficient if we used a digital desk."
M°rch-Kerrison is working the console quite extensively, using around 50 scenes during the show. "Certain songs have five or six scenes in them, to switch from verses to choruses etc," he says. "I've discovered a lot about the architecture of the console and software because I need to switch instantly and seamlessly from one thing to another.
"Otherwise it's not a huge set-up - 36 inputs coming off the stage - but that's not the issue - I wanted it for the sound, the capability, etc. We have the XL8 in a 48-channel format with two stageboxes, so it's configured appropriately for the show."
(Jim Evans)
