When Oasis front of house engineer Bruce Johnston decided to embrace digital mixing, he naturally looked no further than the DiGiCo D5 Live console.

Currently in the midst of a 27 week tour, Bruce has found the desk’s versatility and small footprint perfect for the range of venues that the band is playing - from 800-seater clubs to 70,000 capacity outdoor festivals.

“I’ve been doing Oasis for about seven years and figured I needed a change,” says Bruce. “I wanted to try the D5 Live, so once the management agreed to hire it for the tour, it was time to get out of my comfort zone and learn some thing new!”

Bruce set up the desk in his na tive Australia and got to know it by running multi track audio. “Within one day I was over the fear factor and the desk seemed quite normal to use,” he says. “After that, we had a week of rehearsals, then we took it out on tour.”

There have inevitably been a few things to learn along the way, but DiGiCo’s technical support has been quick to give Bruce the answers he needs, although ge tting help at a sold-out festival isn’t always easy!

“We were at one German festival. I decided to use the COAX cable and work with MADI, rather than the fibre
optic. I needed to ask a question but all the mobile networks were jammed because of the sheer number of people,” he relates. “So I had to run to production, ring Australia and ask them to call DiGiCo. They called me back very quickly and gave me the answer - it was as easy as that. And if any thing goes wrong on stage, we just softpatch it and have the problem fixed in minu tes.”

As well as the D5 Live’s ease of use and sound quality, it has had economic benefits because of its small size and lightweight.

“One of the reasons they agreed to hire it was because it’s light and small, plus I said the opening acts could use it,” Bruce continues. “The first half of the tour was in clubs with two opening acts. Normally we would have used three consoles, so it was very good because some of the clubs only held 800 people. We did that in America with three or four bands each day and didn’ t miss a beat. And in theatres we saved 20 seats.”

Wi th typical Aussie humour, he adds with a grin: “I hate to say this, but lighting control is now bigger than me. They have seven screens - I had to borrow one the o ther day jus t so I looked better!”

Bruce is clearly very happy with the D5 Live, which has made his job doing the rounds of festivals a lot more comfortable.

“Now that I’m used to it, I really like it. I t’s really easy for the festivals, just two racks, and it sounds great from the word go. I’m having a pleasant festival experience this time. I think I’d find it very hard to go back.”

A Soundtracs console was also at the heart of the television broadcast of Oasis’ Manchester show.

The gig, at the City Of Manchester stadium, was originally scheduled to be broadcast live on ITV. However, the subsequent decision to stage the Hyde Park Live 8 concert on the same day led to the broadcast being held over until the following week.

Broadcast specialist Sound Moves owns two Soundtracs DPC-II equipped mobile studios, the larger (96 channel) of which was used for the Oasis show.

Having worked wi th Oasis’ video producer Dick Carru thers and his company, Cheese Film and Video
Productions, before Sound Moves dovetailed effortlessly in to the produc tion.

“As with all big gigs, the scale of the production and the stringent health and safety rules were the major challenges,” says Sound Moves founder Steve Williams. “But video production manager Dave Wright made the job very straightforward for us, ensuring that things like cable runs were all well prepared in advance.”

Although the DPC-II could have taken digital feeds direct from Bruce Johnston’s DiGiCo D5 Live console at FOH, this would have meant the FOH production necessarily being locked in to the video production. So analogue BSS active spli ts were employed to feed the Soundtracs console.

“Because the concert’s broadcast was delayed for a week, we weren’ t doing live to air mixing,” says Williams. “In the event we actually produced a guide mix, saving the audio to a Pyramix hard disk recording sys tem. This then went to Jon Lemon who did the final broadcast mix. But the versatili ty of the DPC-II mean t that this type of change was very easy to accommodate.

“In truth, the biggest problem we had was the opposite of the norm. Rather than not enough time, we had
plenty. We sound checked on the Thursday, and then had to return south for two days before going back to Manchester again for the show!”

“I converted the files that Sound Moves gave me in Pro Tools at Sarm West on a J Series SSL to do the final mix,” adds Lemon. “I was given a very clean recording and it all sounded good. The end result was excellent. I do a
lot of Oasis’ live broadcast stuff and this is probably the happiest that Noel has ever been.”

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


Sarah James at Gasoline Media
Tel: +44 1372 383000
Email: info@gasolinemedia.com