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Chaidi Backs Venue for Daniel Powter Tour
Belgian sound engineer Hassan Chaidi was eager to take the Digidesign Venue out on the current Daniel Powter theatre tour after local rental company DEE Sound & Light became the first production company in the Benelux to incorporate the proprietary digital mixing environment into its inventory.
Chaidi had been impressed after Ampco Belgium, the Digidesign Live distributors, held a seminar attended by over 50 leading sound engineers. As a result, André Schneider’s Boom-based production company promptly confirmed their first Venue order to mark the birth of the new DEE Digital Rentals division.
“Although we’ve been playing through the house systems on this tour, I wanted to take this desk with me,” Chaidi confirmed during a break from soundcheck at the Carling Academy, Bristol. “I knew there was a demo version in the country and I sat there for four hours familiarising myself with it. There was no need for a manual as I had already done a lot of research about D-Show on the website.”
The first thing he noticed was what a really ‘live’ and great sounding console this was. “The preamps and dynamics are fantastic and the headroom in the system is amazing.”
Hassan Chaidi, who runs his own live sound recording company Beatracks, has been working with the Canadian artist for two years. “I first met him in Brussels and the management said ‘Come with us’. I have been touring the world with him ever since.”
Powter’s career has gone from strength following the success of his single, Bad Day and album, Daniel Powter. His line up on stage includes keyboard (Daniel), drums, guitar, a second keyboard and bass. It has been Chaidi’s mission to create a much more dynamic live sound than registers on the CD — but you can only produce that sound if you have the right tools.”
He says the sound is generally so great coming off the stage that he he can EQ the band fairly transparently — with just a modicum of distortion. “I have worked a lot on the drum and bass elements, and also the sound of the vocals. But the key to it all is the harmony. Every day I am learning more and more about Venue.”
He has been connecting Venue to his laptop running Pro Tools LE software for 18-track recording of the shows on a nightly basis. “As a result, at soundcheck they need to play only one song, whereas it’s also a great reference when we’re playing venues where the PA is different from night to night.”
Live he has been drawing heavily on the Sony Oxford plug-ins— particularly the Reverb as well as Digidesign’s DigiRack and Mooger Fooger suites. Early on in the tour he was also running monitors for the band, thanks to Digidesign’s Personal Q system. With just one tour under his belt (and US, Japanese, Australian and South American legs to come) Hassan Chaidi has been won over by Venue’s charms.
“I wanted something that was intuitive, easy to carry, great sounding and easy to set up. Venue meets all these requirements. And whereas it would have taken me ages to set up the sound structure on a desk previously I can now do it in two minutes with Venue.”
In picture: Hassan Chaidi mixes Daniel Powter on a Digidesign D-Show.
29th June 2006
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