Die Lauser mixes traditional acoustic Austrian instruments with keyboards, drums and guitar... and bagpipes. The result is the kind of clap-and-stomp-along anthems for audience participation, making the tartan-toting band a favourite at festivals throughout Austria and Germany. This year the band took its special sound to the USA, headlining each of the four nights of the annual German Fest (billed as Milwaukee's Original Haus Party). Normally, the band tours with DiGiCo SD8 mixers. However, the popularity of the console meant an SD8 wasn't available, but the ability to assign anything anywhere on the console, combined with DiGiCo's new SD Convert software meant a change to SD9s for German Fest was a breeze.
"We were on tour in Europe until two days before the US shows, so we had no time to ship our equipment to the USA," says the band's Front of House engineer and production manager Mario Held. "We rented what we needed for German Fest from Clearwing Productions and, as we were going to be using an SD9 in this instance, I tried the new SD Convert Software to convert my show files from the SD8 to the SD9."
Four of the band members play between three and eight different instruments each, so Mario normally has over 50 console inputs. He managed to bring it down to under 40 for German Fest by sharing some instrument inputs and reducing the amount of effects, which meant the show could be mixed on the SD9.
"I had just 24 faders instead of the 36 I have on the SD8, but I found I could easily modify the layers, set spills and groups during the soundcheck and ended up with a nice working setup. After the first show I pretty much forgot that I only had two thirds the number of the faders that I am used to," he continues. "During one song one band member plays seven different instruments, so the SD8 allows me to be as flexible as they are. It was an interesting challenge to do it on the SD9, but we managed it and overall everything worked very well."
(Jim Evans)
