Renowned Soulsound sound engineer Jose Ortega (also Quincy Jones Productions, Imogen Heap) was at the helm of the M-5000 for the majority of the performances. Describing his experience using the M-5000 for the first time, Ortega commented, "The M-5000 was quick to understand and has really good features that made my life easy."
Roland Product Manager Nico Suarez was also on hand for setup and to support the engineers for three days of back to back performances. Following the success of Somersault, de la Soul also used the M-5000 in a similar setup for the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire.
"I had the pleasure of having the Roland M5000 desk out for a couple of festivals this summer," commented de la Soul. "The best features of this console are the 96kHz processing, the wonderfully configurable architecture, the easy-to-navigate control surface with features like Isolation and Anchors and the rather numerous User Assignable faders, knobs and buttons - which give a really intimate level of control over key channels and parameters.
"The really handy Isolation button allows the fader banks to be separated, so you can have two people working on the same desk, and Anchors are also a superb feature for usability and quick finding of important channels without scrolling through dozens of channels or flipping through layers. All in all a rocking console! We had an absolute blast with it, and it sounded simply fantastic."
A tutorial video showing the M-5000 setup and features was made at Somersault to use as a resource on the Soulsound website and can be viewed at https://www.soulsound.co.uk/roland-m5000-overview.
"Showing great technology 'at work' is part of our commitment to educating and inspiring our audio engineers. The M-5000 at Somersault was a perfect example of what can be achieved within a relatively simple setup with the right product," added de la Soul.
(Jim Evans)
