Engineer David Loudoun and his company DMZ Live have an impressive list of recording credits to their names, including Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Spotify, One Direction and EMI Records, to name but a few. One of the company’s latest projects was the recording of Celebrating Jon Lord at the Royal Albert Hall at the beginning of April, where a Bel Digital MADI monitor was deployed.
Held in memory of ex-Deep Purple keyboard player Jon Lord, Celebrating Jon Lord at the Royal Albert Hall featured performances from many of his friends and band mates. The resulting album, for which DMZ Live recorded and mixed all versions, has subsequently reached number one in the Music Video charts in four countries.
DMZ Live’s high spec digital recording mobile was used for the recording stage at the Royal Albert Hall, with the premix done at the company’s North London studio, and the final mix performed at Abbey Road.
The RAH was where David deployed the Bel Digital BM-A2-64MADI monitor, a 2u rackmount audio/status monitor which enables auditioning of MADI channels without the need to connect to external routers or audio consoles. Providing engineers with the diagnostic tools necessary to interrogate MADI streams and view the status of embedded channels, it accepts both optical and co-axial MADI feeds and features audible and visual monitoring of each channel. The monitor is compatible with 96kHz, 88.2kHz, 48kHz and 44.1kHz sample rates, and is also compatible with both the legacy SMUX and High Speed MADI protocols.
“We took multiple incoming MADI streams from the venue,” Loudoun explains. “There were a total of four feeds: two to pick up the band audio; one to pick up the orchestra microphones; and one was our stage box for all additional microphones.”
Loudoun and his team used a Nova 29 MADI router as the hub of their audio in the recording mobile, with four Pyramix DAW recording machines to double head record everything.
“The Bel Digital MADI monitor was perfect for us, as we could quickly look across any of the MADI feeds for a confidence check and it also allowed us to have another position for monitoring,” Loudoun concludes. “It was simple and effective.”