Blur’s already legendary brace of Wembley Stadium shows this summer saw the band opt for a DiGiCo Quantum 7 mixing desk to handle their biggest ever headline shows.
The gigs marked 35 years since the band’s formation, as well as the release of their acclaimed new album The Ballad Of Darren. Alongside the Wembley shows, Blur also announced intimate warm-up dates in Colchester, Eastbourne, Newcastle and Wolverhampton, as well as festival appearances.
Monitor engineer Dave Guerin and FOH man Matt Butcher are long standing Blur crew members and DiGiCo users. Back in 2015 when the band were last on the road, the two engineers were working on pair of DiGiCo SD10 consoles. This time, two DiGiCo Quantum7 desks were specified.
“The Quantum7 is a different beast!” begins Guerin. “I now have 200 channels on the surface with 43 unused, 25 mono and 35 stereo aux with four unused, and 36 control groups with 11 unused. That channel count also includes inputs and outputs for the 34-person choir that joined us for the two Wembley shows.
“We added a third SD Rack with AES inputs and outputs on top of what we already had, and radio mics and IEMs for the choir. The Quantum7 accommodated it all without breaking a sweat and no additional desk or monitor engineer was required.
“For the album launch show, the choir weren’t with us, but Damon’s in-house string section Demon Strings were and the Quantum7 could additionally accommodate them without running out of resources.”
Supplied by rental company Entec Sound and Light, Blur’s tour also featured two additional full SD Racks with 32-bit input cards and a mixture of line output and AES output cards, all on two Optocore loops.
“We have a long association with Blur and have been supplying DiGiCo consoles to them for many years,” said Entec’s Dan Scantelbury. “We’re always confident that they’ll deliver a rock solid performance and meet Dave and Matt’s needs in terms of functionality and audio quality.”
Entec also supplied a 192 channel record system that sits on one of the Optocore loops.
“The benefits of having the record system on Optocore and not the usual MADI is that it works on both Engine A and Engine B of the FOH Quantum7 with just a couple of HMA connections. It also means that all 192 channels of playback are available at the monitor desk,” added Guerin.
“I basically fool my Quantum7 into thinking that those channels are its own record and playback channels by adding two DMI-BNC to my desk and then patching all the desk MADI outs back to MADI ins. A virtual soundcheck on monitors is as easy as at FOH. For me, this is a game changer. For example, the strings section were able to rehearse songs without the band having to be there.”
One of the major benefits of using DiGiCo SD and Quantum desks for Guerin was that he was able to use iPad apps Faders and Macros from dgApps. This meant that the use of buried parts of the desk such as Shout PFLs were sped up and he was able to programme and send specific instruments to multiple aux outputs with just one app fader .
“DiGiCo’s Mustard EQ is also great. I’ve moved quite a lot of channels over and drum sounds come easy, too,” said Butcher. “The dynamic EQ is still useful in the precision EQ, but the mustard dynamics give more interesting options. For example, the FET compressor does a great 1176 style limit compressor for vocals.”
Blur are still on the road for the remainder of the year, with gigs across the globe in Norway, Japan, Belgium, Portugal and Colombia.
“The Quantum engine certainly brought the work surface up to a whole new level,” Butcher concluded. “The flexibility of the audio network and ease-of-use is second to none. Removing passive splits and all the connectors and cable impedances, including the preamp input really improved the clarity of signal, especially from the dynamic mic capsules. We have been rack sharing and using this for Blur, Gorillaz and Damon’s solo projects, too. DiGiCo is the only way to go.”