The current Future Nostalgia world tour of English singer/songwriter Dua Lipa is being supported by UK-based Britannia Row Productions in supplying DiGiCo Quantum consoles for both front of house and monitors.
Lipa is the winner of (so far) six Brit Awards, three Grammy Awards, two MTV Europe Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award, two Billboard Music Awards, an American Music Award, and owner of two Guinness World Records. The tour headed out in February 2022 and will finish in Perth, Australia in November, having visited North America, Europe, Latin America and Oceania.
Both the FOH sound and onstage mixes are being created on DiGiCo Quantum digital mixing systems, by Will Nicholson and Alex Cerutti respectively. Nicholson is in his seventh year with Dua Lipa and specified a Quantum7 console for this tour.
“The Q7 offers so much. It’s the only desk currently on the market with a dual brain, which negates the need for us to carry a spare board but gives us redundancy. That is very comforting,” says FOH engineer Will Nicholson. “It’s also the flagship console for a popular brand, and we are on a world tour, so having global support is very important. Although we might think about power in terms of I/O or FX engines or similar, for me, one of the greatest strengths of the Q7 is its endless configurability and potential. It gives us the opportunity to approach shows and mixes in ways unique to each show and artist, and tailor our approach to the show content.
“Fundamentally, the Q7 won’t impart anything to your mix unless you ask it – color, glue, warmth, shine, whatever you want to call it. But, if you do want something, the Q7 might just have what you need – so, the power lies in the potential for making your mix reflect the artist’s ambition.
Nicholson is currently running around 60 music/band inputs at FOH, so with returns and audience mics the total input count is close to 100. Outputs are just left-right but he notes that he’s a heavy user of busing. “I have some plugins and outboard, distributed through an SD-Rack, a DD2FR and some local I/O,” he says. “I make use of the onboard FX for quite a few things, and I absolutely love the Spice Rack and Mustard Processing. I also record from the MADI splits as the virtual soundcheck capabilities are fundamental to my workflow.”
Meanwhile, at the other end of the multicore, monitor engineer Alex Cerutti is also piloting a Q7 in a very different way: “I’ve worked with Dua since 2016 and for this tour I asked for either a Q5 or a Q7. When the Q338 came out I wanted to try that, but after counting up inputs and outputs, etc., I needed I few more busses than the Q338 could provide.”
Cerutti’s Q7 handles 130 input channels, 59 aux channels, 20 groups and 10 matrix outputs, then he uses the configurability of the control surface to give him access to everything as he likes it. “My input channels are on the banks on the left, my auxes, matrix and groups on the right with a ‘mix’ layer on the top, with Dua’s vocal and reverb, plus instrument reverb returns,” he explains. “On the center two fader banks I have Dua’s Groups and DCAs on the bottom and Aux mixes on the top bank.”
He is also utilizes DiGiCo’s Macro Buttons, noting, “They’re a life saver, a couple of my favorrites are Macros that send IEM mixes to a spare IEM transmitter. Another is one that swaps my main and spare vocal channels, as I have multiple versions of our main vocal, all doing different things and going to different people. So, without the Macros, it would take far too long to swap each channel.
“We’ve had our consoles out in both the U.S. and Europe on over 60 shows so far, inside and out,” Cerutti concludes. “They’ve been faultless throughout. We have an excellent relationship with DiGiCo; whilst we haven’t had any issues, they’ve always come back really quickly with my questions on how best do to things. As per usual, our experience of using DiGiCo’s consoles has been great. The support from both them and Britannia Row Productions has been fantastic.”
