Last October, the group undertook an intense promotional tour (7-7-7) hitting seven countries in seven days for seven shows. Eighth Day supplied four complete control systems-two in Europe; one in the U.S. and another in Mexico City-so the engineers were able to simply walk in and mix. Although Ehrbar was working on an SD7 for the whirlwind week, Hamilton had to make do with another digital desk and was happy to be back on the SD7.
"Getting back on the SD7 for the Diamonds tour was like a homecoming... 'Yes, I'm back on my desk!," Hamilton laughs. "When I was first introduced to DiGiCo, I was using D5 on Mary J Blige and Lionel Richie. Then the SD7 came out, I used it with Lionel Richie, Janet Jackson, Prince and now Rihanna. I've had many years on the desk. The SD7 just feels right. It's the digital desk that feels analogue to me; it sounds warm. I don't have to do a whole lot to make what I want to accomplish happen. Some desks colour your sound and I like the fact that the SD7 is transparent. What you put in is what you get out of it. Also, this console has tons of headroom."
Each SD7 is in an Optocore fiber loop with two DiGiCo SD192kHz racks along with one mini SD rack to wrangle the mass of over 96 inputs for the four-piece band and backup singers. The majority of the inputs were taken up by three drum kits and two keyboard rigs, with 24 channels of Pro Tools. The set list, comprised of 35 songs, is broken into acts, each representing a different facet of the singer's repertoire-from Reggae to rock and more.
(Jim Evans)
