North Carolina-based Special Event Services and audio crew chief/system tech Michael Mordente employed a DirectOut PRODIGY.MC modular audio converter joined by a PRODIGY.MP multifunction audio processor on the recently completed The Better Life — 20th Anniversary tour by American rock band 3 Doors Down tour.
“The PRODIGY.MC was deployed in tandem with the stage box as a modular converter to manage critical aspects of the I/O topology and redundant signal distribution on stage and to front of house,” Mordente explains. “That means media, format, and sample rate conversion for interconnect between our pair of Yamaha PM10s on stage and FOH, and for the main support act Seether’s DiGiCo SD9 at FOH and Avid Profile monitor desk.
“The PRODIGY.MP with its powerful FPGA and DSP was used as the main system drive at FOH, with the comprehensive and extremely potent globcon software platform controlling it all,” he adds.
A redundant 96 kHz MADI stream was the primary digital audio format with both AES3 and analog as back-up sources, along with a Dante network “standing by” as yet an additional layer of redundancy. Further, the DJ feed from the stage was managed and controlled by the PRODIGY.MC, enabling it to be fully isolated from the consoles and under the control of DirectOut’s devices.
3 Doors Down front of house engineer Curtis Flatt notes, “With DirectOut, I was able to have everything I needed in one unit — EQ, control, multiple redundancies, no added coloration, headroom for days, integrated input/output for system measurement and optimization software, along with the ability to integrate multiple consoles — and that’s just scratching the surface. What it truly gave me was the sonic palette I needed to create a mix and not worry about it adding its own colorations.
“I can also speak for my colleague Michael “Ace” Baker, the front of house engineer for Seether, who was very pleased with the system headroom, ease of integration and seamless interconnectivity between the Yamaha and Avid Dante-based consoles and the DiGiCo MADI-based desk,” he continues.
Production manager and monitor engineer Warren Cracknell concludes, “I had heard so much about the PRODIGY Series from my colleagues in the industry and really wanted to get them on this tour. I’m so glad Mike was available and able to join the tour. The PRODIGYs made a world of difference and took everything to the next level sonically. I will be requesting them for all my tours going forward.”
