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Glastonbury Goes Digital Courtesy Digidesign

Although Digidesign doesn’t yet have a plug-in which removes mud, with the company’s Venue D-Show and D-Show Profile occupying the coveted FOH position on the main Pyramid Stage, this year’s Glastonbury Festival was presented with the event’s first all-digital festival format.

The Venue environment was specified as the resident system by the experienced Simon Honywill, system designer for the control system providers, RG Jones Sound Engineering. His decision was immediately justified when around 85% of the main stage acts, spanning the gamut of artistic performance — from Shirley Bassey to the Arctic Monkeys, Paul Weller to the UK Youth Orchestra — had their sound mixed on a D-Show.

Of the 36 acts that appeared on the Pyramid Stage, everybody mixed using the Digidesign system apart from the two headliners each night, and of those the Arctic Monkeys supplied their own Venue.

Two Digidesign D-Shows piggy-backed between the main stage acts throughout the Festival, allowing the incoming sound engineers to pre-programme their mix, and these were output via AES into the master D-Show Profile for digital distribution to the loudspeaker system.

To achieve this, Simon Honywill created a high-speed digital transmission to the stage, and the enhanced sound quality this year was undoubtedly due to the combination of Venue’s unique mix-buss algorithms and Optocore’s handling of the digital data; the delivery of the vocals, in particular, was incredibly clean.

The heavyweight consulting engineering team consisted of Simon Honywill and Diarmuid McLennan, while Robb Allan was providing Digidesign training support (although many of the incoming sound engineers were already familiar with the Digidesign topography and operating mode).

Commented Simon Honywill: “I chose the Venue as the Pyramid Stage FOH desk because I felt it offered everything the Festival needed — an easy work surface, with all the toys that anyone could want, coupled with the fact that it’s appearing more and more on people’s riders.

“It was great having Robb Allan there as he had a lot of input and helped us set up the show. He brought two Digidesign Access All Areas plug-in sets so that any engineer could turn up with his own show and plug-ins, and all we needed to do was change the output patch on the D-Show.”

Simon said the reaction to the console from just about all the sound engineers had been extremely favourable. “With the generic announcements, VT’s and DJ also going into the D-Show Profile everything worked seamlessly, and the system was rock solid throughout.”

Robb Allan confirmed: “Many of the pre-programmed shows we simply dropped in — whatever software version they were written on, and whatever plug-ins were used.”

All the channels would appear pre-named, and with preset gates and compressors already in place, requiring simply to adjust threshold levels on the top row of encoders, which the back-up team fine-tuned while the engineers worked on the mix.

Channels were added and subtracted on a laptop and dropped back in on a USB key, while reverbs, pitch changes and other FX the engineers asked for could be called up with ease. “In three days we were never asked for a single thing we couldn’t supply,” declares Robb Allan.

But it was the engineers who had never seen the desk before who were able to take advantage of the template Simon Honywill’s team had established.

One these was Lily Allen’s sound engineer, John Delf, who while being an experienced digital engineer, was using Digidesign D-Show for the first time. John had tried to hire a D-Show in the three gigs leading up to Glastonbury but all the hire desks were out. So his first hands on experience came just two hours before the show where he familiarised himself with D-Show within ten minutes of seeing the console.

He was another to praise the assistance given by Robb Allan. “One valuable lesson I have learnt is you should let the babysitter who knows the desk help you around it.

“With Robb’s assistance I was able to set up my channel EQ’s and inserts, using a couple of the preset EQ’s from the onboard library for kick and snare which were almost identical to the EQ’s I normally use. They worked surprisingly well and I only needed to make minor changes to them once the show had started.”

John used all the onboard compressors and gates for drums, bass, piano, acoustic and brass — and for Lily’s vocal loaded up one of the Focusrite comps.

“I must say the Venue D-Show TDM plug-ins are the most exciting aspect of the desk and I would love to take one of these desks out on a production tour just to be able to experiment with all the options. At present I just record shows on my Mac in stereo — but the ability to multitrack every show directly to Pro Tools is a huge benefit.”

Summarising, the sound engineer said: “All the people in the tower seemed to really enjoy Lily’s show, especially when Terry Hall and Lynval Golding from The Specials joined her to cover Gangsters. It was a real festival highlight.”

Also included in the eminent roster of Venue users were Ange Jones, who mixed Paul Weller’s set and Davey Cooper. And these were just a few of the many.

Even sound engineers travelling with non-Digidesign consoles were requesting Venue onsite training, with a view to specifying the board on future tours.

But Venue activity was not merely confined to the 36-or-so act playing the main stage. On the Other Stage, where Skan PA — another major Digidesign rental house — was providing the PA, Kevin Pruce mixed Friday night headliner Björk on one of Wigwam’s D-Shows, while Skan themselves provided a desk for Sharon Levinson to mix Arcade Fire.

Meanwhile, SSE’s D-Show inventory was also heavily called upon; of their four consoles currently out on tour, two were in use at the Festival. While Matt Kettle was mixing Mark Ronson on the John Peel Stage, John Ashton used the Digidesign console to mix Pyramid Stage headliners Arctic Monkeys and over on the Acoustic Stage, Damian Rice had a Venue D-Show in both the FOH and monitor positions.

Summarised Digidesign European live sound sales manager, Mike Case: “The industry reaction was very favourable and the vibe at FOH generally was the best I have ever witnessed — which is reflected in the number of Venue systems now out in the field.

“We are delighted that Simon had the confidence to spec the Digidesign system, and even more that so many sound engineers chose to use it — particularly those enjoying the experience for the first time.”

In picture: The Digidesign set-up at the Pyramid Stage.

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Glastonbury Goes Digital Courtesy Digidesign

4th July 2007

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