UK – DiGiCo has announced its first American sale of the D5 Live Digital Mixing System, to Chicago’s dB Sound, and the console is already in action on a European tour this month by Ministry, with dB Sound’s VP of Tour Development, Lee Popa, at the controls.

Promoting their new album Animositisomina, Ministry are touring their brand of extremely loud electronic metal rock around Europe this month with dB Sound. The D5 Live is proving a huge hit with Popa because the large band line-up presents him with no less than 67 inputs from stage and an endless stream of effects and processing cues.

Lee Popa comments: “I’ve been working with Ministry since ‘88 to ‘95 and now I’m back with them again. A lot of the bands I’m dealing with at dB Sound are underground, a bit different from bands like the Rolling Stones and AC/DC that we also have going on at dB. There’s a new generation of bands and a new generation of young sound engineers, people who have come out of their bedrooms and DJ mixers and want to mix real bands live and who are really good at it – new talent with fresh ideas. That’s one of the many reasons we’ve gone for the D5 Live – there’s a whole new wave happening out there and we intend for dB Sound to remain at the cutting edge.”

Ministry’s lineup is two drummers, bass guitar, 16 tracks of Akai samplers, three guitar players, including co-founder Al Jourgensen, mandolin and harmonica.

“ With Ministry having so many inputs,” continues Lee, “and acoustic drums and things like that, I can keep a better handle on it using this desk and watch things that are happening. There’s so much stuff, but now I don’t have to just work on the snare drum for an hour. I press the button and the gain is set approximately for how we would like it in the show and then I do little minor gain adjustments and little minor EQ adjustments. And I love to mix. It takes a toll on you when you have to carry that amount of gear, because we have to do an 8am load in and it takes until 2.30 in the afternoon to get the stuff up and I have to trouble shoot everything. Here, I’ve got my gates and compressors in the desk, and I don’t have to trouble shoot all of those cables. That’s a big thing for me.”

Also useful, he explains, is the ability to store presets to match different types of house systems encountered on the tour, in this case dB’s own EV X-Array, Nexo and Turbosound: “I already have EQ and dynamics set-ups in the desk for these different PA systems. So today when I started I put up my Turbosound mix and I adjusted the snare drum, because he put a new hi-hat on. And everything else came up right. Bass drum was a little loud because the bass drum mic wasn’t in the exact same position. So it’s amazing for me.

“ It gives you a great starting point. I’ve used all of the digital desks that are out there and this is the best device that I’ve seen. It’s the fastest and easiest for me to mix on and it’s made by sound people. That’s the key here. You can sit in R&D, but when all hell’s breaking loose at the gig and 2000 kids are screaming and your adrenalin’s pumping like you’re in a top fuel dragster, you’ve got to know that if you hit the button it all comes back and returns to the starting point, it makes everything really great.

“ Because I don’t have to listen to the bass drum for two hours, and all these individual instruments, I’m really fresh when the band comes in and it’s like capping off last night’s mix. [Ministry co-founder] Paul Barker told me that today was the best sound they’ve ever had. And I really believe it’s because we keep recalling a great starting point. Another great thing is, I’ll take it home to the States and plug in my USB key and bring up the whole mix again this is where we’ll start from again. It just makes everyone so happy. There’s so much less time spent on sound checking that now the band can play through the arrangements and learn new songs and things like that in our two hour time.”

It was dB Sound’s Harry Witz who chose the D5 Live, says Lee. “The D5 just sounds incredible from the A/D converters onwards. The compression and the gates are so friendly and just what you want in a live sound application. Just like an old Neve desk, if you put it on an Al Green track you go, this is the sound I’m looking for. And the one thing I learned about the D5 is that once I stopped looking at the screens to see what I’m doing and just listened to what I’m doing that really came to life too.

“ Harry bought this desk because he doesn’t want to miss out. He really thinks this is the future. Anybody that’s every mixed on one doesn’t want to go back. All of the hip hop bands want to use it because it really makes that limiting and compression, and make all those things they have to do on-the-fly programmable. When there’s six bands on a bill, you just go to your stored settings and it makes it so much better for everybody, and it makes it possible to do all the changes exactly on the downbeat. It really is the future.”

dB Sound’s Lee Popa (right) and Paul Barker, bassist with, and co-founder of, Ministry.


Press Contacts:
Dave Webster at DiGiCo
Tel: +44 1372 845600
Email: webby@digiconsoles.com
Web: www.digiconsoles.com


Mike Lethby or Sarah James at Gasoline Media
Tel: +44 1372 744333
Email: info@gasolinemedia.com


Harry Witz at dB Sound
Tel: 001 847 364 1100
Email: info@dbsound.com