Throughout the tour, three DiGiCo consoles have been the beating heart of the audio system - a D5 Live on Front of House, another for George Michael's monitors and a D5T for band monitors.
Andy 'Baggy' Robinson has worked with George Michael for the past three years. He is the tour's head of sound and Michael's monitor engineer. He says: "Early on it was obvious this show was going to need a digital desk solution. With 15 in the band, including six backing vocals, plus the lead vocal who has very exacting monitoring requirements and needs large amounts of time devoting to him, it swiftly became apparent that monitoring would be a job for two people.
"We brought John [Roden, who had also done monitors on Wham's The Big Tour two decades ago] in to do band monitoring and discussed the pros and cons of the potential digital solutions," he continues. "It was quickly obvious that DiGiCo was the way forward. We could share inputs, have a large number of channels and all the outboard we would ever need could be connected. When Gary [Bradshaw - FOH engineer] came on board, he decided to join us, although it would have been easy for him to take any desk solution, as FoH and monitors didn't share stage racks."
A key requirement for the show was to have as many channels as possible. The flexibility of the DiGiCo D5 design meant that all the on-board console effects could be turned off to gain more channels - all effects being run from outboard - and allowed Baggy to design a complex system which linked all three consoles.
"We used two stage racks each for FOH and monitors, giving a total of a possible 112 inputs, of which we were using over 100 for the show," he says. "Each monitor board then had two local racks for the outboard connections needed. This meant that ultimately we were running 160 channels each.
"FOH also had a local rack and a third stage rack, with all racks on an Optocore loop. The channels of each second local rack and the third FOH stage rack joined the desks together, so that mixes and direct outs could be shared between the desks, all within the digital domain. Where possible we kept everything digital, including the outboard."
The tour's main loudspeaker system comprised d&b J8s and J12s each side, with floor-stacked subs. Side hangs comprised Martin Audio W8LCs and W8LMs, collectively giving almost 270-degree coverage, allowing for the very maximum number of seats to be sold in each venue.
A TC 6000 was used for reverb, thickening and double tracking of Michael's lead vocal, the same unit also being used for drum reverbs. A range of other delays, reverbs and dynamic effects were used at FOH, all linked via MIDI to effect program changes as Bradshaw loaded the snapshot for each song onto the D5, which also recalled all faders, mutes and EQs.
"During rehearsals I was able to record everything on Digital Performer via the D5's copy MADI link. I could then play them back into the desk to fine tune the mixes," says Bradshaw. "We also recorded all the UK shows for archive purposes, again using the copy MADI feature," he adds.
During the show, Bradshaw also used the console to send six analogue feeds - lead vocal, backing vocals, bass, submixed guitars, percussion and keyboards - to the video crew. These signals were used to generate interactive images on the main video screen meaning that the audio would affect images on the screen, which would move or change in time with the music.
Stage monitoring was a combination of IEMs and d&b wedges/side fills, with the Baggy-manned D5 exclusively used for Michael's monitoring needs.
"I was running in 160 channel mode to be able to bring every input and
