The moment arrived in late June as Metallica embarked on a 12-date tour of shows and festivals across Europe, starting in Lisbon and ending in Moscow. As all shows plus two days of production rehearsals took place during just three weeks, two identical control and backline systems leapfrogged their way across Europe, with both XL8s supplied by Canegreen via the M7 Group, which facilitates UK XL8 rentals.
"I always considered myself an analogue diehard and I've used Midas since the Pro 1," says Hughes. "I tried most other digital consoles along the way but I never felt comfortable. The XL4 is a heavy beast, it feels firm and positive, whereas some of these digital consoles just didn't feel substantial, and I'm too big to deal with anything that dainty! And I was never convinced by the way they sounded; there was something inherently wrong. So when Midas said they were coming up with a digital console I thought if there was one I'd like, this would be it.
"If I was going to change to a digital console it would have to be something I could operate and feel comfortable with. The last thing I want to do is scroll through a load of pages to do one little thing, and while I'm doing that I'm missing something else. As an engineer I wanted it to feel semi-analogue; I wanted to be able to touch a knob on a channel, press a button and send a channel to stereo, turn a gain, push a fader and have sound come out of the PA.
He continues: "I've configured it pretty much as I would have my XL4; I'm doing things that I would have done on my XL4 and it feels similar. It's made it easier because the XL8 brings the channels to you. I don't have to get off my chair anymore. When I want to work on the kick drum I don't have to scurry down one end, I can press the button and it'll come to me."
Meanwhile on stage, monitor engineer Paul Owen is at the controls of a trusty XL4, which he is using with a Klark Teknik Square ONE Dynamics units for drum gates. He's particularly impressed with the Solo Output feature which monitors the sidechain filter through the XL4. "This is a great feature - you can hear what's activating the gates which you can't do with any other models," he says. "As for the XL4 - I really like the sound of that preamp; there's a lot going on onstage and I have to be able to do things on the fly really fast, so from my perspective it's the ideal desk."
(Jim Evans)Big Mick Hughes.
