The 25th annual MOBO Awards recognizing black music and culture staged late last year in London at OVO Arena Wembley saw live sound provider South West Group Events (SWG Events) deploy several DiGiCo mixing consoles at both front of house and monitors.
The lineup of artists for the event included Nile Rodgers, Kojey Radical, Tion Wayne, Fireboy DML, Cat Burns, FLO and Eliza Rose. SWG Events head of audio Simon Purse served as the audio crew chief, adding that for the first time, the Bristol-based company was sole audio supplier for the event.
“The MOBOs is a technically challenging event to pull off,” says Purse. “It was also an extremely quick turnaround from when SWG Events won the project to when the event happened, so prep time was limited.”
The company’s DiGiCo digital mixing consoles, including an SD10 and SD21, were used at the event, with a guest SD12 also deployed at Nile Rodgers’ monitor position and an additional SD12 at FOH, as well as several SD-Racks for I/O. “DiGiCo is always extremely rider-friendly,” continues Purse. “If you put an SD10 on monitors and an SD12 at FOH, you just know that whoever turns up, they are going to be happy. With the MOBOs being such a premium production, and knowing there could be last-minute additions to the lineup, we wanted to ensure we had the best audio equipment to work with.”
Without many specifics until just before the event, Purse notes that having Simon Honeywell at front of house and Mark Sunderland at monitors was a comfort because he could rely on their skill sets to build the channel list as they went through it. “The nature of the gig meant we couldn’t be more prepared,” he adds, “so having experienced engineers like Simon and Mark was key to ensuring a successful outcome.
“What was really useful was knowing we had the MADI split options in the SD-Racks,” Purse continues. “This gave us lots of different ways of splitting the signals to the OB truck, and we knew we would have plenty of I/O channels. Thanks to the MADI splits, we didn’t need to have tie lines to the OB truck, which gave us additional flexibility.”
He notes that while the outside broadcast was independent, it relied on the live system split being consistent. SWG Events had two MacBooks with two audio interfaces simultaneously running playback and timecode, with both interfaces then fed into the S21, which was set up to receive one unit as primary, the other unit as the secondary. “This meant if any interruption to the signal of the primary unit should occur, an automatic switch to the redundant unit would kick in with no interruption to audio,” he explains.
“It was a new gig for us, so we wanted to ensure everything was perfect, and it really was!” Purse concludes. “We walked into it and smashed it. Everyone was pleased with the result and how things were running on the night. Having DiGiCo as house consoles made our job much easier, as we know they’re rider-friendly, reliable, flexible and delivered great audio, which was exactly what was expected of such a premium event. We are currently awaiting delivery of an SD12, so our arsenal of DiGiCo solutions will be even bigger and better, making us prepared for any exciting challenges lying ahead!”
