| JULY 2008 | |
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FOO FIGHTERS DIGICO D5 ERA NEARS END AS BRYAN WORTHEN EYES THE SD7 |
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Following a highly successful UK arena tour in November 2007, Foo Fighters returned to headline two sold-out shows at London’s Wembley Stadium in June 2008. But in some ways these shows marked the end of an era as, the next time the band visits the UK, front of house engineer Bryan Worthen will have swapped his long-serving pair of DiGiCo D5 consoles for a brand new SD7. The 2007 dates saw Bryan’s D5s at work on a complex front of house arrangement, the tour’s two-stage format necessitated that both consoles needed to be able to control the PA systems on both the main ‘A’ and subsidiary ‘B’ stages. However, the size of Wembley stadium meant that using this format was impractical, so on these shows the second D5 was used to provide full redundancy for the main FOH console. “Everything was done from the one stage at Wembley because, with the size of the venue, the problems with delay from B stage would have been horrendous,” says Bryan. “So at those shows I ran the second console in mirror mode as a backup.” However, Bryan was still faced with some major challenges, as the shows were performed ‘in the round’ and slapback was a significant factor. “The new stadium has a horrendous echo, much worse than the old one,” says Bryan. “We were stereo imaging all the way round, so I had PA pointing in all directions. Like any football stadium it’s basically a rectangle and so the echo was coming back at different times from the ‘short’ and ‘long’ sides to the band on stage. “Not too many buildings give us a hard time, but this was certainly a challenge.” It was while he was over for last year’s arena tour that Bryan paid DiGiCo’s Surrey headquarters a visit and, together with Foo Fighters monitor engineer Ian Beveridge, spent some time getting to know the SD7. “ The guys at DiGiCo went through the whole thing with us and I fell in love with it. We were there for about five hours,” says Bryan. “There are many things I like about it. For me, the visual side is a big improvement - the bigger screens, the way it’s laid out and how the EQ knobs and selectable controls light up in different colours makes it easier for me to identify the control for the parameter I’m adjusting.” He continues, “The EQ is a lot more precise and looks a lot better, while the channel and processing compression sounds a lot better. “To be honest, I will only really be able to gauge what it sounds like in a show environment, so I haven’t really had the chance to hear it properly yet. But everybody I know who has used it on shows - for example Madonna’s FOH engineer Tim Colvard - claims that it sounds even better than the D5.” Bryan will have to wait a little while, however, as the series of US arena shows Foo Fighters are playing in July reverts to the two stage format. “I will have my tried and trusted setup of two D5s on those shows,” says Bryan. “It’s only a dozen or so gigs, so I didn’t want to bring in a new console just for those. “But whoever I go out with next will definitely see me using an SD7 on front of house. I can’t wait to use it!”
Press Contacts: Sarah James at Gasoline Media |
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