Russell Sladek has the responsibility for Katie's and the band's stage sound. "On this tour, we have been working with new JBL floor monitors," says Sladek. "The speaker processing that came with the system sounded OK on Katie's monitors, but we tried out an XTA on them and the sound just opened up. It was a night-and-day comparison. "We though it was worth trying and it proved correct. I have used XTAs before and love them. I have done a lot of work with their GQ600 graphic EQ at home in Finland and these are the best."
The other element Sladek wanted was some dynamic compression to work the low-mids on the wedges themselves. "The DiGiCo D5 has so much processing power, but I have much of that set-up in Graphic EQ mode instead of Dynamics. What I needed was some extra control and when Matt showed me the SiDD, I had to get it off him. I run the Dynamic EQ section and pick out just over 300Hz when it needs a little attention."
FOH man Matt Manasse had originally requested the XTA SiDD for an upright bass which had two mic channels: "In the end we decided to go to just one mic because Russell just didn't want to let the SiDD go," comments Manasse.
Assisting Sladek and Manasse is Tim Peeling, no stranger to SiDD himself. "I tried one out when the unit first became available. It was just so good I bought it myself. Whenever I am asked to engineer, I always take my own mini rack, as it just falls below the airline baggage allowance level. My SiDD goes everywhere with me, as I never know what problems I have until I get there."
Concert Sound provided the EAW system with Lab.gruppen amplification all round. "To control the PA, I run three DP226 front-of-house, all with digital inputs," continues Manasse. "So I can come straight out of the DiGiCo D1 and let the XTA's handle the digital to analogue conversion. With XTA's Audiocore software, it is a very simple and straightforward system. Shame Russell stole the SiDD though."
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
