Jon Lemon has been utilizing DiGiCo consoles on A-list tours for nearly eight years, so when the mix engineer was asked to handle front of house on a short tour with The Fray, he took the opportunity to check out the latest DiGiCo SD10 console.
The Denver rocker’s mini tour, opening for U2 on a handful of make-up dates from last year’s cancelled tour, allowed Lemon to assemble and test-drive a small touring package utilizing the compact SD10 in tandem with an SD 192kHz DiGiRack and the Waves/DiGiCo SoundGrid bundle.
“I was really keen to use the new SD10 with a full Waves package to see if I could actually do a tour without carrying any of my normal, expensive outboard gear, which I’ve gotten quite used to using,” Lemon explains. “Last year, I took an SD8 out on a Smashing Pumpkins tour because we were flying so many places and I wanted something small, lightweight and powerful but I still had all the outboard etc. to ship I liked it, but preferring the SD7, the new SD10 seemed more SD7-like — from the meters and faders to general feel.
“Having 96 channels with full processing appealed to me, as did the SD10s macros, especially on a single screen DiGiCo product, because you can get around a lot quicker by having them programed. The ability to have more inputs is highly important, too. Bearing in mind that on most modern tours these days you seem to do more flying, it was my goal to get this powerful, small package together, and for a travel pack, I think it’s totally ideal — and probably the way I’m heading for the future.”
Working out of his home studio a few weeks prior to rehearsals, Lemon was able to set up the console, working off a hard drive from the band’s previous live shows. “I was impressed with SD10’s layout right off the bat and liked having 16 plug-in racks to work with. Going into rehearsals in Las Vegas, we set up, switched on, and it was all there ready to go. It felt like I’d done a couple of weeks of rehearsals, when in reality I’d only spent two weeks at home and two days with the band and I had a full show ready to go.
“The nicer bonus was the new SD192 rack, which showed up during rehearsals – my inputs actually sounded better. I’ve been using those other racks every working day of my life since 2002, and it’s a completely noticeable difference to me. It sounded cleaner, more analog sounding, and the high-end is different too. More airy.”
Lemon’s enthusiasm with his tour package is enhanced with the addition of the DiGiCo/Waves SoundGrid bundle. “Between the console’s compressors, gates, dynamic EQ and dynamic compression—not to mention the straight Waves plug-ins on top of that—you’ve got quite an arsenal there! The Renaissance plug-ins, especially the reverbs, are so good. Combined with some of the high-end valve compressor emulations, H-delays, H-compressors, and SSL buss compressors, there’s so much available to you.”
An interesting situation presented itself on the tour and one in which the benefits of the Waves bundle were extremely evident. “On the U2 shows, the main end of the PA had two lefts and two rights — flown side by side—so one system was doing all the vocals and all the guitars, and the outside system was doing all the drums, bass, keyboards, etcetera. Normally, on my left and right I would have a Waves hardware piece, the BCL — the one with the Renaissance Compressor, a Maxx Bass and an L2 Ultramaximizer. I
” added another stereo bus for all of the shows we were doing with them and then it was really easy. I was able to drag up another rack and then copied and pasted my original three plug-ins—the Renaissance Compressor, Maxx Bass and L2 Ultramaximizer — into another rack and then instantly I had my settings available on two masters. That was a very easy way to handle having another output in a complicated system.”
“I also found that, where I would normally run parallel drum compression live and have to use an outboard compressor such as a Smart C2 Compressor or an SSL Bus Compressor, I was able to do it internally on the console using the SSL Bus Compressor. Normally, when you do it with analog outboard, you’ve got to loop in and out of a straight drum bus to make up the latency of the compressor to stop it phasing. All that’s calculated and compensated for you within the Waves/DiGiCo package now, so stuff like that is useful and quick. You can build up your own presets like you can do with the regular channel EQ, dynamics etc.”
