Kicking off at Cardiff's Motorpoint Arena on 13 March, demand for tickets saw a number of shows added to the UK arena leg, which ran through to mid-April. In mid-May the tour moved to Australia and Asia, returning to Europe for further headline and festival shows.
Monitor engineer Craig Pryde has used DiGiCo consoles since 2008 and has worked with Little Mix since they won the X Factor three years later. "The SD10 sounds great. It's extremely flexible in its set up and having so many output busses available makes it really easy to provide all the extra mixes required for this kind of show, including understage cues, integration with show radios, the video team, etc," he says. "Rehearsal time was extremely tight for this tour and the fact that the offline editor is exactly the same as the console meant the vast majority of work could be done before arriving at rehearsals."
Front of House engineer Mark Littlewood first used DiGiCo in late 2013, mixing One Direction on an SD7. He's been with Little Mix since December 2015. "As the tour is completely sold out, I knew FOH space would be at a premium," he says. "I chose the SD9 because it sits perfectly on the drive rack and takes up a tiny footprint. The FOH PA tech actually takes up more room than the console! Having a full 24 faders on one layer also gives me access to everything I need quickly, with the other layer only a button push away."
Supplied by Wigwam Acoustics, the DiGiCo consoles are handling 43 MADI inputs and six Sennheiser SKM5200 handheld wireless microphones for Little Mix, plus further playback, piano, acoustic guitar and six wireless microphones for the opening acts. Both engineers are taking advantage of the options offered by Waves SoundGrid, which allows Waves integration into DiGiCo consoles.
(Jim Evans)
