He also realised that, with an audience of 50 people crammed into Studio 2, he would have a limited footprint on which to operate. A call to Digidesign's Mike Case and a Venue mixing environment (with the restricted surface requirements of the D-Show and sidecar) was shipped to site and shoehorned in behind the boom covers. Playing all the instruments himself, McCartney debuted eight songs from his forthcoming album Chaos And Creation In The Backyard during an 18-track intimate solo performance which was to air as part of Radio 2's Sold On Song series on 17 September.
Boothroyd could have had the pick of desks, having driven most of the contemporary analogue and digital boards, but as he said: "I wanted to go down certain avenues and develop some ideas with simulations, and so I opted for Venue because of the Pro Tools support. "We had to recreate what the Beatles originally sounded like and it was a huge challenge to do this on the fly. But with the plug-ins I was able to use some classic effects, Pultec EQ and Bomb Factory Fairchild replica, as well as vocal spinners and room simulations. The desk also has some great onboard effects."
The selection of Venue followed his success with the desk on the La's revival tour back in June - and not for the first time Mike Case became Pab's backroom support. When he first moved to Digidesign Mike had contacted all the top line engineers (including Pab Boothroyd) to herald the imminent arrival of Venue. Pab was particularly interested as his current studio work with AC/DC in London had provided his introduction to Pro Tools LE, with the plug-in and editing facilities."When Venue became available, I decided to check it out, and Andy Huffer at (Digidesign dealers) Marquee Audio arranged for Robert Collins and I to have a demo at Concert Sound. Although we didn't have time for a full exploration we quickly got to know it . . . how the patching was at the stage and front of house end, with the coax, multis and redundancy. We also put a (Beta) 58A in and thought it sounded nice - that was the first sparkle ever out of a headphone amp I can remember."
One of the biggest challenges facing a sound engineer first exposed to a new desk is finding opportunity and circumstance to use it. Not that Pab had any residual doubts. "Venue was hardly an experimental product; Avid (Digidesign) is a great company and I was already familiar with the the Pro Tools format."
That opportunity came when his friend John Powers contacted him. John had originally been a member of the La's (whose major 1990 hit There She Goes has reached ringtone status) before leaving to form Cast, for whom Pab became long-time sound engineer. Now a La's reunion tour had been set, and the prospect of Powers again joining forces with front man Lee Mavers was a beguiling one. "John had recommended me as a fellow Scally to manage the sound, and while I wasn't familiar with all of their work I thought this was a great opportunity to try out Venue - since we were playing a mixture of small and large venues, and I didn't fancy humping big analogue desks and a couple of racks of gear around.
"In the past my philosophy has always been don't fix what isn't broken, and until now I had had no reason to approach anything other than what I was familiar with - and no time to take a new desk out in a touring context and get to know it. But I had got my head around the whole layering thing so here was a chance to get a digital desk out. I could have gone for other desks but when Mike sa
