On the Digital Edge

Traveling around the world and performing in a different city each day, it’s somewhat difficult to establish a lasting sense of continuity within one’s daily professional experience. We consecutively encounter venues that vary in age, size and architectural design — with each structure presenting its own unique set of physical and acoustical challenges. One of the few constants on a world tour with a major artist is the presence of those few pieces of essential gear that we carry everywhere with us. For example, I have been mixing on the same DiGiCo SD5 console since this tour began last May. It is both the cornerstone and the centerpiece of my mobile office.

The James Taylor tour recently completed its seven-week European itinerary in London. My original intention was to spend a few extra days in that familiar and beloved city following the final show at the Royal Albert Hall. During that stay, my day-off-buddy and monitor engineer, Rachel Adkins, and I had planned on hitting up some museums, eating great curry, taking a drive out to Stonehenge and catching up with old friends. That appealing script, however, had to be altered before we even left the USA.

Preceding our European tour in the summer of 2009, with the lyrics of Huey “Piano” Smith’s “Sea Cruise” floating through our minds, the James Taylor crew boarded Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 for a transatlantic crossing. As romantic as this ocean voyage adventure seemed before we cast off in New York harbor, reality presented a rather different version of the story for those of us on the crew. For the majority of the time spent on this legendary luxury ocean liner, we were confined in a cramped salon on the lowest deck of the ship, setting up and working rehearsals with the band. Aside from the two shows James and the band performed on the final days of the voyage, the most memorable highlight of the cruise turned out to be a lengthy tour of the engine room given to us by the chief of engineering.

After nearly two months of mixing James Taylor shows on DiGiCo’s SD5 console, I have evolved from an awkward neophyte to an experienced user. During this time I have also become a devoted DiGiCo believer. My appreciation for the audio output I am able to create with the SD5 grows each day.

In the days immediately prior to this year’s James Taylor tour, I cajoled my nephew Gabe Morgan into helping me move the DiGiCo SD5 console out of my living room and out to the garage for pickup. I then I traveled to New York City where James and his band were performing at a private event that took place in the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square. For this show, I would be using the familiar Avid D-Show desk for the final time this year. The band configuration was the same as it was for our final 2013 show in Honolulu, and I could quickly recall that complete setup from USB drives. Under the time constraints one encounters working this type of event, that strategy was definitely the best available option. The show went very well, but I was eager to move forward with the process of changing console platforms.

This past week, console manufacturer DiGiCo and its USA representative, Matt Larson, graciously enabled me to engage in a completely unique and exceptionally rewarding experience when a SD5 console was delivered to my home and set up in my living room. This marks the first time in my career that I have brought my work home with me in such a literal and physical sense. Matt and I first connected the console to the Waves SoundGrid server that allowed me to access Waves 9 plug-ins. Next, we enabled 48 tracks of Reaper playback from my MacBook Pro through the DiGiCo UD MADI interface. Finally, we employed the board’s local analog XLR I/O connections to play back stereo tracks from my iPhone and to connect the console’s analog outputs to my JBL XPL200 speakers.

In last month’s column, I expressed the opinion that the greatest challenge in making a digital console platform change is coming to terms with the data legacy of one’s digital history. Saved within the Avid VENUE platform, I have compiled and stored seven years of complete console data from several tours with James Taylor, Mariah Carey, Joe Walsh, Cher, Bette Midler and Five For Fighting. Among these archives are extensive input/output patches, complete channel libraries, EQ libraries, and individual libraries for an extensive number of Waves, TC Electronic, Trillium Labs and Avid/Digidesign plug-ins. I have repeatedly employed this store of information contained in these libraries to quickly and easily construct shows for varying band formats or random one-offs with entirely different bands. Having this dense repository of information literally at my fingertips is a luxury to which I have grown rather accustomed.

In this age of digital devices, I am often asked if I have ever considered returning to mixing on an analog console for my touring clients. My answer is always an unequivocal “No!” Since 2006, when I migrated away from analog to an exclusively digital mixing rig, I have confidently embraced the audio technology, the work surface and the software that comprise working in a digital environment. The positive contributions to the successful execution of my art so heavily outweigh any possible negatives that I have never felt any twinges of nostalgia for the massive consoles and outboard equipment racks that once inhabited my FOH mixing position. Digital mixing generates layers of repeatability, recall agility, snapshot complexity and plug-in diversity that, quite simply, are impossible in the analog world.

Part 1 of this anecdotal tale relating our experiences in Lagos, Nigeria (FOH, Jan. 2014, page 39) ended at the moment we discovered that the Mariah Carey production crew had become secondary players in a turf war between the Eko Hotel special events staff and an outside vendor. The conflict over which party could best provide the stage sound equipment and band gear had caused our production schedule to succumb as collateral damage. It was a struggle that the better-prepared hotel staff was most certainly going to win. The outside supplier was well intentioned but very much out of his depth — obviously under-experienced and woefully under-supplied.

One-offs are always an adventure. A Mariah Carey one-off in Lagos, Nigeria turned out to be an ongoing series of adventures. The first arena of activity was the establishment of basic technical communication. Our production manager opened the dialog among all of us on the crew and our contacts in Africa about a month and a half before this event was to occur. We communicated our equipment preferences and awaited a reply from the vendors in Lagos. It took a while to hear back from the production company that was overseeing the event and information was delivered in frustratingly small packets, but what I eventually learned about the FOH audio situation was definitely encouraging.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have taken an in-depth look at many individual TDM plug-ins that I’ve employed while mixing various artists on the Avid VENUE platform. Different artists and productions may present a variety of audio challenges for which unique software solutions are required. However, this month’s column will be devoted to listing the Top-10 “must have” plug-ins I find myself using on every setup. Some have been in my virtual effects rack since I was first introduced to the VENUE platform in 2006. Others are more recent additions, but are no less valuable in the creation of an optimal live audio product.