KNOXVILLE, TN – The engineers supporting the 2011 Alison Krauss & Union Station (AKUS) Paper Airplanes tour, including FOH engineer Cliff Miller and monitor team Bernie Velluti and daughter Haley, have been using DiGiCo SD10 consoles. Miller specified the dual consoles used for the tour after first trying them out for AKUS at Merlefest in 2010.
"The console is so amazingly consistent and I'm very pleased with the clean quality of sound we're getting out of it," Miller said. "Mixing an acoustic band like this is probably one of the more challenging things for a digital console… it's really the sum of all the parts and what goes into the console that affects what comes out. There's a lot of detail with stringed instruments that you never hear with electric guitars and a lot of the other typical rock ‘n' roll instruments.
"It's important to understand the sound of these instruments because when they're amplified, it's literally a balancing act to get that right blend-where the sound system is equalized and isolated enough to keep the instrument resonance minimal and as natural as possible, and the low-end frequencies maintained," Miller continued. "And that can change, too, depending on the facility and whether it's indoor vs. outdoors.
"Outdoor sheds with vinyl roofs over the audience are a real challenge. There's a lot of reflection even when you make a point of keeping the PA out of it. It's very live," Miller added. "I find that even in the varying circumstances, once I get the overall PA tuned the way it needs to be, then my presets work well from day to day, inside or outside, pretty consistently.
"The only thing that may change is the EQ from day to day. Sometimes Ron [Block; banjo/guitar] may change the EQ on his Fishman Aura DI, depending on what he's hearing in his ears. That affects what I'm getting at front of house, so I just compensate for that on a daily basis. I let him get it to suit his taste and then I set it to suit mine!"
For more information, please visit www.digico.org.
