"I had originally planned to use an analogue desk, but I then saw the Sugababes at an AOL Winter show at Kentish Town Forum, and they were using a D-Show to mix the sound. I remember it sounded so clean and for the kind of material Amy was doing that's exactly what we wanted," says Swallow.
When it was time to put the production together he contacted Roly Oliver at Brit Row and said he would like to try out the desk. Brit Row duly obliged, supplying the console as part of a production set-up which included the Outline Butterfly line array system. Along with the D-Show Profile came the support package - courtesy of Digidesign's UK reseller Marquee Audio.
Jock Bain, system tech for the Winehouse tour along with Gerry Fradley, was already able to lend support for the Digidesign platform, having toured in a similar capacity with Toto, and shared in FOH engineer Jon Ostrin's positive experience of Digidesign's larger Venue environment. He particularly commended the smaller board's layout and suitability for smaller theatre venues such as the Shepherds Bush Empire.
After an afternoon refresher with Marquee's Andy Huffer at the Shepperton Studios HQ, Dave Swallow was sufficiently confident to sell the concept of digital mixing (via the D-Show Profile) to the support band engineers. "They were initially sceptical but because of the way the board is set out it's just so easy to work with. With the 24 faders and 48 inputs on the Stage Box, everything is right there in front of you. The Amy Winehouse set-up uses 29 channels. But because we can stereo some channels up, we are able to fit it exactly on the 24-channel A bank of the desk."
For the UK leg the artiste's backing comprised two brass, guitar, drums, bass, keyboards and two backing vocals. Swallow experimented with different vocal mics eventually deciding that the the ATM 89R best suited her mic technique and provided the crispness for her vocal in the mix between brass and guitar.
Summing up the D-Show Profile, Swallow said, "It's been a great experience and I have only been using a DPR-901 outside of the desk FX; anything else I brought along, I haven't needed to use."
For a full review of the Amy Winehouse tour's technical production, see the April 2007 issue of Lighting&Sound International magazine.
(Jim Evans)
