Jackson explained that he needed more outboard equalization in addition to the qraphic equalizers on board the Yamaha DM2000, which is where the Helix devices came in. "I used two units on the primary mixes for the show," he said, "and was very pleased with them. Although Helix is a digital unit, the sound is consistent with all of the analogue units that KT has developed over the years.
"In the Pop Stars application I found the notch filters to be especially useful. Because Rivals is more of an entertainment show than a dedicated music programme, the stage was not really set up from an audio perspective. For example, the wedges were under a tightly woven mesh all around the asymmetrical stage and, at times, fired straight into the microphones. The result, of course, is that there were some horrible frequency issues to deal with, so I had to be quite aggressive with the notch filter. However, the result sounded very good, and was consistent throughout. It was also nice to have all of the graphic and parametric EQ functions in one box and to be able to use them simultaneously. I am really looking forward to the slaves to becoming available, as there are so many advantages to being able to have 16 mixes in just 4U of rack space!"
(Ruth Rossington)
