The D5 system, supplied by Britannia Row Productions along with an L-Acoustics V-Dosc PA, involved a pair of D5 Live work surfaces at front of house, with Robbie being mixed by Dave Bracey, and another pair on monitors with Martin Waring at the controls, each pair was linked together by a single lightweight digital cable. One desk at FOH and one monitors was dedicated to Robbie while the support bands used the others.
Running the newly introduced Software Version 2 (which is available as a free upgrade to existing D5 Live owners), the desks featured new facilities including four-console networking, new security modes, more processing options, enhanced snapshots, improved bank layouts and extra monitoring facilities. Because both FOH and monitor desks share the same on-stage A/D DigiRack, there's no need for line splitters and heavy multicores and the system provides pristine audio quality by keeping the sound in the digital domain from stage A/D rack to desk outputs. Additionally, both monitors and FOH were 'mirrored' with a second redundant console as backup. In mirror mode, The two consoles 'track' each other and all the processing automatically switches over to the second mixer within one audio sample - meaning the switchover is silent.
Amid all the excitement, another 'first' came when superstar support act Moby, added to the line-up at the last moment, was mixed on the D5, demonstrating its user-friendliness as it was, Moby FOH engineer, John Pennington's début with the system, after less than two hours' rehearsal.
The FOH and monitor consoles were configured so that the monitor console's insertable processing channels provided EQ and delay to the local monitor outputs; on the FOH console, more use was made of the onboard effects. Bracey commented: "Even though you've got such a large number of inputs and so many facilities, you feel like you're mixing on an analogue console again. This is the desk I have been waiting for, fantastic."
Pennington said: "The actual operation of the desks was straightforward and from a newcomer's point of view it was very user-friendly to EQ, setup and configure. The compressors and gates were impressive with fast gate response times and great sounding too. With the desk being so small a crew of two could put together the whole system, it must be a production manager's dream!"
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
