At opposite ends of the UK, and indeed opposite ends of the musical spectrum, two artists have recently been using the RSS V-Mixing digital 40-track package to record concerts, one for a live album release later in the year and the other for archive purposes. Both AC/DC tribute band Live/Wire and Sheila Jordan, one of the stars of the Sage Gateshead International Jazz Festival, were using RSS digital audio technology to provide front-of-house and stage sound control for their shows.
The 'grandmother of bebop', Sheila Jordan is still performing in her eighties. For her concert at the Sage Centre in Gateshead, Simon Kenning from RSS was on hand to support the in-house technical team, led by Chris Durant. With two S-1608 Digital Snakes available to carry signal over Cat 5 via REAC from stageboxes to a M-400 digital mixer at FOH, the engineers were able to provide a completely clean mix to the recording system, running Sonar software on a local PC.
"We also made a recording of the FOH mix," says Kenning. "With both available, it means that they can overlay clean tracks onto the live mix if they want."
Meanwhile, in Banbury, AC/DC's keenest tribute band was on stage and recorded to digital 24-track for a Live/Wire 'live' CD release later in the year. One of the dates on Live/Wire's Walk All Over U/K tour, the Banbury gig used the M-400 to handle monitor mixes and record the show to 24 tracks and record a 'fly' mix so the band could listen to it all straight after the gig.
Says Live/Wire's Andy Tinker, "It's an impressive system and worked perfectly, even with a power cut mid-set on the Saturday night. We also found that my little laptop could record 24 tracks of audio easily, without any special set-up at all. The obvious advantages of a digital desk for a touring band are huge, the set-up time is minimal and the fact that we could record every show so easily is just wild."
(Jim Evans)
