Quantums on song on Maluma’s world tour
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The tour relies heavily on top technology, including Clair Global’s Cohesion series PA system, as well as other DiGiCo products, including SD-Racks, an Orange Box, DMI-Waves cards, and a complete Optocore network loop. The Quantum338 consoles, used at both front of house and monitors, are the central hubs for a complex but reliable audio infrastructure that performs at every show as flawlessly as Maluma himself.
The implementation of the Quantum338 was a system-critical decision for the tour, says German Tarazona, who this year moved from mixing monitors to managing the FOH mix for Maluma (aka Juan Luis Londoño Arias). “We needed a system that could integrate with our requirements for this tour,” he explains. “We wanted to be able to share gain structure to make fewer format conversions and access our tracks via MADI on the same network loop, and the Quantum series made that all really easy to design, with the support of Fernando Delgado from DiGiCo London and Clair Global, which supplied all of the tour technology.”
Tarazona says the Quantum Mustard and Spice Rack processing have streamlined the system both operationally and sonically. “At front of house and monitors, we are using the new Mustards, and they are a great combination of the legacy and the new DiGiCo technologies. The compressors in particular are amazing.
“At FOH, I use the new multiband compressors in the Spice Rack to control the sequences and the blend with the live band. They work extremely well and can be assigned to the faders, which assures complete accuracy when making changes during the show.”
The gear list for Don Juan features a Quantum338, one of two 56x40 SD-Racks with 32-bit I/O used for gain sharing with monitors, an Orange Box used to run sequenced tracks, and a DMI-Waves card for integrating two Waves Titan servers. Tarazona and monitor engineer Juan David Medina are both also using the SoundGrid Qrec app at FOH and monitors for multichannel recording on Reaper software on their respective desks. In total, the show has 76 analog inputs, plus 18 more via MADI, while monitor world has 40 outputs for 20 in-ear mixes and a dozen or so intercom channels. System technician Rick Soukup keeps the wheels rolling, along with PA technicians Brandon Allison and Sam Pinson, and RF tech Austin Dudley.
