Wicked takes DiGiCo Quantum on the road
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The latest touring edition of the show is scheduled to hit 15 cities, from Baltimore to Vancouver. These shows put the musical’s songs through a new DiGiCo Quantum 7T console. Purchased through Milwaukee-based Clearwing Productions, the compact audio desk features DiGiCo’s sophisticated theatre software, a package designed specifically to meet the demands of theatrical workflows, with features such as an auto update system, aliases, the players tool and a VCA programming map.
“We spent the better part of two years planning the upgrade for the touring show, and the DiGiCo was the obvious winner,” says Zach Williamson, current associate sound designer for the Broadway and touring productions of Wicked. “We were looking for the console that will take us for the next 10 to 15 years on the road, and the Quantum 7T is it.”
The Broadway show continues to use the same analogue console it has since day one, nearly 7,000 performances ago, but the touring version needed the kind of power and small footprint that the DiGiCo desk affords users. “The Quantum 7T is light to travel with and load in, and its reliability is exceptional, which is critical for a touring console,” says Williamson. Both he and Wicked sound designer Tony Meola have been impressed with the console’s performance for tours that have taken it from Seoul to Sao Paulo, as well as for extended “sit-down” runs in Mexico City and Tokyo.
“We like the sound of the console, and the Quantum engine gives us a lot of security, allowing us to actually eliminate the monitor console we had been using and take our monitoring feeds directly off of the front-of-house console for the Aviom monitors,” Williamson explains. “The Quantum processor can support that for our fairly high channel count, while the console’s theatre software gives us features such as aliases and profiles that track individual performers. And the 7T’s flexibility of layout means we can condense the entire production to layers on two fader banks and the master section.”
FOH engineer David Romich had been a fan of DiGiCo’s SD-Range for over a decade on various shows, but until recently, the Wicked tour was mixed on the same analogue system used on Broadway. “It wasn’t an easy decision for our team to replace that,” he says. “The SD7T was always an option, but the dual-Quantum engine configuration gave us the power and redundancy we needed to make the move.”
(Jim Evans)
