WWW.LSIONLINE.COM • APRIL 2020 39The stacking of six S10s with
four subs per side for most of
the theatres was a strategy to
maintain consistency from
venue to venue, Colvard adds.
“The tour started at The
Brooklyn Academy of Music,
where we used a full array
installation of boxes to cover
everything - under balconies,
opera boxes and so on.
Providing audio in historical
theatres such as this required
patience in order to get speaker
placement approval by the
venue. Along with those
challenges was that Madonna
has never performed in theatres
before. She’s been in large
arenas and stadiums her whole
career, so that took time to
adjust to.”
In monitor world, engineer
Matt Napier supplemented his
own Quantum 7 with two DiGiCo
SD11i compact consoles with
Stealth Core 2, which dove-tailed
into the workflow in order to pay
particularly close attention to the
lead vocals. One was operated by
Sean Spuehler, Madonna’s
long-term live vocal FX engineer.
Napier explains: “On previous
tours, myself and Sean have
effectively shared a console, with
myself on the SD7 and Sean
using an EX-007 Fader Expansion
Unit. Sean mixes Madonna’s
vocal sound not only for her
in-ears, but also for everything
else: those FX stems are sent to
FOH and broadcast. My role is to
mix the music side of her mix
and take care of the band. As
space was always going to be
a premium on this tour, we
moved Sean onto an SD11i and
it sat on the optical loop. He then
sent his vocal mix to the monitor
Quantum 7, which I then merged
into her final mix. This gave us
great flexibility as, if need be, we
could be up to 350m apart. The
second SD11i was on the same
optical loop and located in
monitor world. As everything was
wireless, and we ran close to 100
channels of RF, the second
SD11i allowed the RF engineer
Ali Vile to listen in on the RF
inputs and actually check
with the musicians before they
went onstage that everyone
was happy.”
The Quantum generation
introduces the new Nodal
processing workflow, which
provides unprecedented
flexibility for the routing of
individualised patches to each
musician. “Nodal is a very
powerful tool,” agrees Napier.
“Quite often you are in
a situation where a musician
wants to hear the instrument
fairly raw and uncompressed,
yet in the final mix it needs to be
shaped to fit the overall mix.
Nodal is ideal for this. As it was
my first time with Nodal
processing I approached it
cautiously but had some great
results. You do need to be
careful as it’s such a powerful
option, but used correctly it’s
a great asset. In this situation,
with so many musicians - 28, in
fact - and such a variety of music
to replicate, from fado to dance,
the ability to EQ and compress
independently was fantastic.”TRUE BLUE
Likewise, the True Solo function
enables Napier and all monitor
engineers to understand better
the experience of each
individual musician. “It really
does,” he says. “The ability to
hear how your buss
compression is ‘driven’ into
gives you a clearer picture of
how changes on an input effect
the final mix.” Meanwhile, with
Napier enthusing that the two
DMI cards and increased MADI
ports are “a godsend”, and
looking forward to experiencing
the new generation screen
technology now deployed on the
latest 338 console, it’s clear that
the Quantum 7 enables Colvard,
Napier and their colleagues to
get into a whole new groove
while retaining the classic
DiGiCo console experience.
“The Quantum is basically
the same as the old SD7,”
Napier points out, “apart from
its quicker and faster Nodal
processing and greater
flexibility, especially the I/O
options. The Waves DMI cards
were particularly great to use for
multitrack recording. All 128
channels on a single Cat6e
cable!” I
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