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DiGiCo D1 Live for Night of the Proms
EML, one of Europe’s leading sound, lighting and video hire companies, lays claim to the first ever purchase of a DiGiCo D1 Live digital mixing console, and has found that it is the perfect solution for Night of the Proms.
The idea for this phenominally successful series of concerts hosted in the Antwerp Sportpaleis was that of two Belgian students, Jan Van Esbroeck en Jan Vereecke. Based on the UK’s Last Night of the Proms, Night of the Proms takes the concept one stage further by adding in contemproary artists to widen its appeal. In 1990, organisers PSE, took the concept to Holland for the first time, shortly followed by Germany in 1994. Now in its 19th year, it is one of Europe’s most successful musical events.
The regular Night of the Proms orchestra is Il Novecento, conducted by Robert Groslot, and this year’s rock contingent include James Brown, Joe Cocker, Supertamp’s Roger Hodgson, Shaggy and Cyndi Lauper, who will entertain audiences with 56 concerts from 15 October until 22 December in Antwerp, Rotterdam and 10 German cities.
“The concept is that it’s a full orchestra, 50-piece choir and rock bands,” explains EML front of house engineer, Patrick Demoustier. “There are many artists, so there are a lot of inputs.” The main front of house console is a DiGiCo D5 Live with another D5 Live to handle all in-ear monitoring requirements for the artists and bands, and the new D1 Live managing in-ear monitoring for the orchestra.
The PA is an Adamson line array system, with JBL outfills and EML main subs balanced with six units of Apex digital EQs - one on each section of the PA. The Apex system is wireless, allowing Demoustier to wander around the venue and EQ from any seat.
Igor Dockx is the EML engineer in charge of the D1, with Tom Vuerstaik on the monitor D5. “As expected, everything with the D1 is running smoothly,” says Dockx. “I like the sound of the console. It’s very neutral compared to an analogue desk, especially the EQs. The compressors are great, and I specially like the FX section, in particular the multiband output compressors a lot. And it’s very intuitive to use - I had a look at my colleague’s D5 Live last year and after only two days I was familiar with all the functions.”
Demoustier says: “We were actually going to buy another digital console for this job. It was July, and we didn’t know that the D1 was coming out. We thought we were going to have to buy something else, just because there was nothing in the DiGiCo range that was suitable. We had the D5, but it was way too expensive for this particular function. Then I phoned Rick, the sales manager at Apex, and said that we would have to buy something else because DiGiCo can’t supply what we needed, and he said: “Wait! There will be a solution very shortly.” And here we are with the D1, which is more flexible than its nearest rival and has a shorter learning curve for us, because most of our engineers have already worked with the D5.”
The orchestra and the choir have custom-built headsets and individual sub mixing systems and Dockx provides each member with their own voice plus an appropriate mix, which they can then level themselves.
“For each section of the orchestra I have a split from the inputs, so I have every instrument separated,” he says. “We have a pre-mix room in the back for the strings where it’s quite, and they deliver pre mixes to FOH, which are stereo, and mono pre mixes to me, which I pass on to the orchestra. The rock part of it - the electric band, the rhythm section and the vocals - I get from FOH and the artist’s monitoring desk. It takes a little while to set up, but once it’s done it’s a very comfortable system with a lot of control. I’m using 22 aux sends and all eight matrixes. There are four stereo mixes that I send to Tom on the D5.
“I use the relative snapshot function on the D1. This is my first experiment with it, so I’ve just made one master. I spent a lot of time to get a good basic mix and copied this to a number of relative snapshots, with the title of each song, and while we were doing the dress rehearsal I went into each relative snapshot and made some changes. That worked really well and I think it’s a good system. Once I’ve got a good input mix, I hardly need to touch them.”
“This concept – the orchestra with the band - has become very famous,” says Demoustier. “Over the years we have found special solutions because it’s very difficult to get the orchestra at a decent level and I think we are using all the consoles to their full extent.”
“Having two digital desks has saved us a lot of time and space,” concludes Dockx. “We’ve gone from needing 7m x 4m for monitor world to 5m x 3m, and the set up time is cut by about an hour each day. We also save a lot of truck space because we used to have a lot of racks for inserts. For the classical part, I was using 24 inserts, which meant two 12U racks full of gear. But now, all of that has gone and I’m just using the D1!”
29th October 2004
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