Stone Temple Pilots cross US with DiGiCo
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Speaking from the bus on a day off, monitor engineer and crew chief Sean Herman, FOH engineer James “Hootsie” Huth and system engineer Chris Demonbreun held forth on the joys of the road and why they chose the DiGiCo SD12s that are at FOH and monitor world for the STP portions of each show.
“When we started this tour, everything had to fit into a trailer,” says Hootsie. “We started before this three-band run doing large clubs and small theatres. This being Stone Temple Pilots, it’s a rock band, we need maybe 24 inputs max. The travelling plans meant we had to go with the smallest frame size possible and it looked like the SD12 had all the inputs and horsepower we would need. So we decided it was time to see what they could do, and they’ve been fantastic. With the same audio quality as the bigger SD consoles and all the inputs we would need for gigs of many sizes and types, we just couldn’t pass up the chance to take out the SD12.”
Demonbreun concurs: “It’s just so simple. By the time I get the PA up in the air [the tour is out with an L-Acoustics K1/K2 package provided by Sound Image] and make my way to front of house, it’s usually already set up and ready to go.”
“One of the reasons we went with this package was because we could loop everything together via the DiGiCo 192k SD-Rack through the Optocore loop and share mic preamps and use the gain tracking feature which we’ve really enjoyed,” Hootsie continued. “The system is simple and the footprint is great for those times - we did a fair number of festivals - where there are seven other consoles at front of house and you need to shoehorn your way in there.”
(Jim Evans)