Casella comments, "From a hands-on perspective, the XL8 is really well thought out. It's a highly sophisticated piece of equipment, with a vast range of practical features missing on other digital offerings. "All digital desks 'work' in a controlled environment, but we, as engineers, do not. The XL8 was designed with that in mind. Around 175 cues are written into the XL8 for this show, including 28 songs and all the cues for the orchestra.
"We're running over 80 inputs, including 24 lavalier mics - it's a pretty loud show. At any given moment there are no more than two vocal mics, so you're really mixing. As well as the storage, recall and redundancy power XL8 is packing, its design elements allow the hands-on element of mixing, including on the fly fine-tuning, to remain part of the mix process."
FOH engineer Pierre Dupree's house console at the Pasadena Playhouse is a Midas Heritage 2000. "Being a Midas fan, the XL8 completely blew me away: this is a digital console that feels just as good as my favourite Midas," he says. "The layout and work surface design on XL8 is so intuitive. For example, when I hit the VCA buttons and see instantly what's on those VCAs, it makes it very easy to find and fix something way down in a mix. Having this much processing power not only means functions are immediate, it allows intuitive, quick recalls for more intuitive blending and mixing."
Casella adds, "The POP (population) groups are proving particularly useful; on other boards you need to create groups before you start programming, which causes problems as a sound designer, as you often don't know what you need until a couple of days into a show. And he concludes: "The desk doesn't have a 'digital' sound to it at all. When we first powered up the system in Pasadena, we actually stopped in our tracks - the phase cohesiveness was breathtaking. When we put in the first CD, it was as if we were listening to a pair of near-field monitors. And with the live musicians it was even better. If it sounds good, it is good - I don't need to see meters to know that."
(Jim Evans)
