THISTED, Denmark — DPA SoundCo supported the annual Thy Rock festival here in late June with a Coda Audio PA system and multiple DiGiCo consoles.
More details from DiGiCo (www.digico.org):
Celebrating the best of Danish music, this year’s festival gear included a main Coda Audio AIRLINE LA12 line array system (28 LA12 three-way high output line array modules, four G712-96 three way front fills), 16 SCP sensor controlled subs and eight RC Racks amp racks with Coda processors.
The festival’s house console was a DiGiCo D5T, but many of the high profile acts on the Saturday brought their own, so the festival also saw five SD8s, two SD7, an SD9 and two SD11i’s in use.
Mads Staerke was the FOH engineer for rapper L.O.C. and pop singer Sanne Salomonsen. Two very different acts, but Mads was very impressed with how the Coda system delivered the sound for both.
“It was my first time using a Coda Audio rig and I was really surprised,” he says. “It was the best sounding PA rig I have heard this summer. Totally beautiful. It sounds so clean and harmonic. You can really hear that it has been designed by engineers with extra passion!”
He continues, “The sound was really in your face, crystal clarity in the high frequencies and a distortion-free low end. What ever you put into it is exactly the same as what comes out. I was blown away by it.”
Kim Johansen mixed FOH for Saturday’s opening act, DJ Kato and headliners Aqua (known for their 1997 pan-European hit “Barbie Girl”). “The experience of the visiting engineers, including me, was that the system performed very well. It is for sure one of the best rigs in the Danish festival scene at the moment. It’s very easy to mix on and sounds great.
“All of the engineers and band managers were very happy, all-in-all it’s a great system with lots of potential.”
A regular DiGiCo user, Kim used an SD11i for Kato and an SD7 with Waves Soundgrid for Aqua.
“In my opinion, DiGiCo consoles offer the best feature set on the market,” he says. “With the SD11, I get a very compact surface without having to compromise the audio quality, unlike with other small surfaces. I use the dynamic EQ and three-band compressors a lot and the SD11 includes features like this, despite its size. When you can lay out the console as you want, the small surface suddenly feels big. For an act like Kato it was the obvious choice for both FOH and monitors.
As for the SD7, Kim is unequivocal in his praise. “For me, it doesn’t get any better than the SD7,” he says. “You get full overview from the 3 large screens and, with the vast amount of power, you never have to say no – you just do it. Using snapshots with total recall and relative groups, the console did a lot of the routine work for me, so I could concentrate on the rest of the mix.
“Working on the SD7 gives you the feel of working on an analogue console, but with all the benefits of digital. I was using a beta version of the Mach 3 software and it was a pleasure using the new de-esser, folding channels and SetSpill functions. It all worked fantastically well, even better than I had imagined it would. And using the SD7 with Waves Soundgrid means that you get the best of both the touring and studio worlds.”
Mads is a regular DiGiCo user and was using an SD9 for L.O.C and the SD7 for Sanne Salomonsen
“DiGiCo are my favorite consoles. I find them very easy to use, I like the way they are set up and I like the sound quality. What’s important for me is that I want to travel with the size of console I need for that artist, not just the biggest. The SD7 and SD9 gave me exactly what I needed for the artists I was working with at Thy Rock.”
