Taking both the Australian and US country music scenes by storm, the New Zealand born Urban heavily relies on the sound quality of the Vista 5 SR while on tour. The Studer Vista 5 SR was chosen by his mixing engineers who went through a vigorous evaluation process prior to the selection of the console but chose the Studer after it met all required criteria: Sound quality, flexibility/ease-of-use and reliability.
FOH Engineer Steve Law and monitor mixing engineer Jason Spence evaluated numerous brands of sound consoles before the tour. Spence noted he had never felt as comfortable with a new desk as he did during the week he was trying out the Studer Vista 5 SR.
"When choosing a console, I have three criteria," said Spence. "It has to sound good to the artist on stage. If it doesn't, there's not much point in continuing. Second, I have to be able to get around it quickly. With the 'inline design' of the input and output strips, the Vista 5 SR feels very 'analog.' I'm able to have control and access to all the parameters at my fingertips. There are not multiple pages to plow through to gain control of any particular feature. Lastly, it needs to be reliable and not crash. It seems that with other brands, I could get one, maybe two of my criteria met; however with the Studer, I got all three."
(Jim Evans)
