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XTA and DiGiCo Produce Perfect Sound for Clapton

Eric Clapton’s most recent UK tour culminated in six sold-out nights at London’s Albert Hall, and his front of house engineer, Rob Collins, has much experience of making this acoustically tricky venue sound great. The Concert Sound JBL Vertech system, processing via XTA DP226s and a DiGiCo D5 Live provided a perfect combination.

Collins first used the D5 for Clapton in Japan in November last year. “I knew I had a big multi-band event with Eric at the start of the US tour,” he explained. “A digital board with all the scene recalls is ideal, but what I didn’t want to do was turn up and not be familiar with the desk.”

The familiarity of eight months of use has brought to light a lot that Collins likes about the D5, from the way the EQ narrows things down, rather than just chopping it off, to its precise level of control: “You’re taking off one dB, not three, and when it says 7.5kHz it doesn’t mean 8.0. That level of control is phenomenal,” he adds. “You get a lot of scope from the XTA’s,” adds Collins. And that, along with the capabilities of the D5, means he really can get things just the way he wants them.

There were a total of 13 XTA DP226s controlling the Vertech PA. System engineer Dave Dixon commented: “There’s one out front as a master which is used for signal distribution. The other 12 are down on the stage and they’re the actual processors for the system. Everything is controlled by AudioCore software, which is very easy to use software. I have my whole system on one page of AudioCore and I can walk round and alter things as I need to. I’ve used XTA processors since they came out, as well as various other processors, and sonically these are the best units I’ve used.”

http://www.digiconsoles.com

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XTA and DiGiCo Produce Perfect Sound for Clapton

10th June 2004

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