The iTunes Festival relocated to The Roundhouse in North London this year, with over 60 artists playing live at this free event, which runs throughout July.
With bands ranging from Oasis, Kasabian, Franz Ferdinand and Snow Patrol at the commercial end to acoustic performers like Newton Faulkner, quirky performance artists with wide dynamic ranges (like Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan), leavened with some good old fashioned hard house and R&B it was important that the event’s experienced sound engineers, Dave Roden at FOH (here deployed as system tech) and Will King down at the stage had digital mixing environments on which incoming engineers could hit the ground running.
Pictured: Dave Roden, iTunes System Sound Tech and Stereophonics engineer.
Although being a relative newcomer to the Vi6, Dave Roden was able to turn teacher after the briefest of inductions on the board. "The only time I had seen it previously was when the Stereophonics played the iTunes Festival at the ICA two years ago," he admits. "I had never even touched one of these desks before, but within a couple of days I could show people how to use it!"
"The Vi6 is great, particularly for engineers who don’t have their own session file because it’s an easy desk to walk up to. I set up a basic template and engineers simply overlay their mix on that."
For those who have only previously worked in the analogue domain its straightforwardness is particularly reassuring. "Not only that, but it produces a nice sound and has great preamps. We have certainly had a lot of compliments."
Will King agreed with his colleague’s assessment of the desk, though he admits he had to mix the first shows himself. "At the beginning I didn’t have a visiting engineer for four days — and in a way that was good because it kept me busy. It’s so easy to show sound engineers how to use the Vi6 — and I become pretty much redundant once the soundcheck starts."
"You don’t get a lot of resistance from engineers when they see the Vi6," Stuart Turvil concludes, adding that he has good reason to thank Soundcraft’s sister brand, BSS Audio, for the 144 channels of [MSR-604 II] splitters that are being used. "I can’t speak highly enough about the support we’ve had from Sound Technology (UK distributor for the Harman Pro brands)," he says.
Full story:
http://www.soundtech.co.uk/soundcraft/news/soundcraft-vi6-itunes-festival
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