The musical switch has brought some controversial changes "The band are playing a Country & Western style show; they've re-written, and re-arranged every song," said Tinline. Erasure's front-of-house engineer was a little more circumspect: "All the songs are recognisable but completely different as you would imagine, being acoustic now," said Matt West. "The core of their music is solid. It would probably still sound good on a cheap keyboard or acoustic guitar."
"That's the skill in the composition and that holds true here. Their audience really like it. I realised by the third song on the first night of the tour I was going to have to turn it up; the audience were having such a good time."
The commitment to running the d&b Q-Series system PA almost entirely digitally was prompted by Tinline's partner at Encore, Mick Martin: "It was his idea," explained tour system tech' Liam Halpin. "It's such a clean signal path, no noise, no signal degradation. The reduction in A/D and D/A conversions makes any issues of latency virtually invisible, even Matt's system EQ is done with the graphics in the Digico D1."
Halpin has devised a methodology that makes even that EQ at the desk almost obsolete. "I set up the system in the usual way; I rely heavily on the systems options within the D12 amplifiers, controlled using d&b's ROPE C computer control software. Those settings are the secret to the system and ROPE makes playing with them very quick."
"It's not just about setting the angles between the cabinets, the CPL (coupling) function in ROPE allows you to compensate for the build up of low mid that occurs as you add more boxes to the array, allowing the system to be consistent no matter how big or small. I then work with Matt as he runs up the system to ensure he only needs to add the creative EQ he chooses to, with practically no corrective EQ as is so often needed with other systems."
It obviously works for West: "I try to twist the room out of the room, if you know what I meanΩ" West has no great affinity for any particular system: "It doesn't matter what speakers are up there, you've just got to get on with it, that's your job. But Liam does a great job and the system reproduces what I'm doing at the desk, and what the band are doing on stage. It's really professional equipment."
(Lee Baldock)
