Over at the bordering Cabin Stage, the SD9 doing double-duty for front of house and monitor functions was a “no-brainer,” Mitchell offers.
“It worked great all around. I was able to set all the monitor settings in advance individually and then recall them digitally as they popped back up—as opposed to previously what it would’ve taken for that size show would’ve been a couple of Midas Venice or Verona’s—and the recall on them would be: write it down with a pen.”
SE Systems’ Chris West, who’d had a handful of previous experiences working on a DiGiCo D5 in his past, operated the SD10 at main stage monitor world. With a fairly low input count for the mostly straight-ahead bluegrass bands—comprised of typically 5 acoustic instruments and vocals—handling main stage monitors on the SD10 was a breeze.
“Zach Duax from DiGiCo came out and gave all of us a crash course on the SD10 console but, honestly, within an hour of when the festival started, I felt comfortable enough to run the monitors for the entire festival for the first time on the SD10,” West says. “DiGiCo’s software seems to have been written by an actual engineer, not a computer programmer. It was really so easy and so logically laid out. Most of the acts were on wedges and it was incredible not having to EQ every channel. The few acts that were using in-ears also really enjoyed the way it sounded.
“For the past 5 years, we’ve used Yamaha PM5Ds and it seemed like you had to EQ every channel to have it sound the way you wanted it to sound. Not with the DiGiCo. All you had to do was mess with the hi-pass filter a little bit and that was about all the EQing you had to do because it sounded so good out the gate.
“Also, you didn’t have to go to a macro to have it do what you wanted it to do. All you had to do was solo the mix and the faders came up, and then I’d bring up the graphic EQ—all with the press of one button.”
After Merlefest, Parker and Mitchell took the SD10 to yet another, albeit smaller bluegrass event in Galax, Virginia and was again pleased with the console’s flexibility in adverse conditions. “Even in cramped conditions, and in a horrible acoustic environment, the console performed great, sounded great and we got nothing but compliments,” says Mitchell. “Once again, we had quite an easy time mixing on it.
“There were a lot of challenges in that situation that the DiGiCo helped with. Bluegrass guys are notorious about not liking digital but they liked the way it sounded and we got nothing but compliments. I’m looking forward to using it again on our next event.”
