After postponing many of its scheduled 2020 dates due to the pandemic, Spanish artist Pablo López’s Unikornio tour resumed in 2022. Spanish full-service company, Ilusovi, is in charge of supplying sound and lighting equipment for the tour, which is one of the first in Spain to deploy a DiGiCo Quantum338 console.
Although Lopez has increasingly played bigger venues, one console is used for both FOH and monitors. Max Miglin, the artist’s trusted sound technician, manages both mixes and explains why he has chosen to use a DiGiCo Quantum338 for this latest tour.
“Ilusovi had recently acquired a Quantum338, and I was able to get to know it up close on a course organised by the DiGiCo’s Spanish distributor, RMS Proaudio, at their facility,” says Miglin. “The Quantum338 has great processing power, so I’m delighted that I could start working with it. As I work FOH and monitors at the same time on Pablo’s tours, I always need a lot of processing power. This has been the case for years with this artist. The size of the venues where we perform doesn’t matter. For various technical reasons, it suits us to do it that way and I’m used to this way of working.”
Along with López on vocals, there is a band that comprises an acoustic piano, a keyboardist, a bassist and a drummer. “The drums have their usual microphones, and the acoustic piano has five microphones,” explains Miglin. “Although this may seem a small number of channels, I need to have them in duplicate or even in triplicate. That’s why I need so much processing power to handle both mixes.”
These very specific needs are because López wears a single in-ear monitor in one of his ears, but also likes to have floor monitors next to the piano. The other musicians all use in-ear monitors, except the bass player, who also uses a floor monitor.
“That’s why I do all those mixes with duplicate channels,” Miglin continues. “The new Nodal Processing incorporated in DiGiCo’s Quantum consoles is a great advantage for me; it frequently stops me from increasing the duplication of channels as I can apply processing to the same signal for different outputs, for example, different equalizations for the floor monitor and for the in-ear monitors.”
In years gone by, Miglin had used other brands of digital for López’s tours. He is now on this third tour with DiGiCo. “This is because of their great versatility when it comes to programming a complex show,” he says. “On the previous tour, I used a DiGiCo SD10 which has a single screen. Now, with the Quantum338, I have three very comfortable HD screens plus all that processing power. Overall, the usability is perfect and it responds very quickly.
“We’re having a great tour that sounds amazing and everyone in the crew is very happy,” Miglin concluded. “The truth is that I’m getting the most out of it and it responds perfectly.”