The current “It’s All A Blur Tour – Big As The What?” tour by multiple Grammy and Juno Award-winning artist Drake, an 11-week trek that kicked off in Florida in February and runs through to Colorado in April, sees front of house engineer Demetrius Moore working with a new Clair Global-supplied DiGiCo Quantum852 console, the first time the platform has gone on the road.
“I was on the Quantum852 for two weeks before the first show, at rehearsals at Drake’s place in Toronto and then at the Izod Center in New Jersey, and I have to tell you that it has made me an even bigger fan of DiGiCo — and I have been a huge fan of their consoles for years,” says Moore. “It has an entirely new level of warmth and clarity. Right out of the box, the experience was like when we went from 48k to 96k. Every instrument and voice occupies its own space. You can instantly hear the difference, even over the talkback, which we’re sending over the comms line.”
The Quantum852 offers ergonomic advantages that allow Moore to manage the 30 channels of tracks used for the tour, with the new desk getting a workout on the tour, adds the FOH engineer, who is joined by monitor engineer Chris Lee on a pair of DiGiCo Quantum338 consoles. Drake’s show will see Lee use every inch of the stage, and with no tunnel beneath the stage, hemay have to run between desks if there are any problems with the rapper’s IEMs. Meanwhile, Ryan Koolman is on an SD12, mixing the tour’s marching band.
Moore is heavily employing the Quantum852 Spice Rack, including multiband compressors and dynamic EQs, while he applies a BAE 1073MPL mic pre and an Avalon 737 tube mic pre for Drake’s Sennheiser 9000 mic. In particular, he’s been applying the Chili 6 six-band, dynamic, multiband compressor/expander to the 9000s of Drake and the one used by the “sports” announcer who roams the crowd during the show, assuring a high level of speech intelligibility and clarity.
He’s also now using a new DiGiCo-distributed Fourier Audio transform.engine, a Dante-connected server designed to run VST3-native software plugins in a live environment, to bring studio software processing to Drake’s shows.
Once he and the Quantum852 hit the road, Moore says he really began to feel the power of the new desk. “The new fader caps are amazing—the traction, the firmness of the movement—and the screens are easy to see while also easy on the eyes,” he says. “The only way to really express it is to say that it’s like riding in a Rolls-Royce. The Quantum852 is the Rolls-Royce of live mixing consoles: stable, smooth, and perfect.”
