Sam Smiths Front of House Engineer Jim Ebdon has chosen the Solid State Logic L200 console to accompany him on Smiths 2018 world tour supplied by Capital Sound, London.
“A lot of the new album was recorded onto 16-track analogue, and then moved onto Pro Tools.” said Ebdon. “I love the feel of the album, and I love the sound of it, and I wanted to recreate that. So the SSL was a no-brainer… It sounds like an analogue console, and it has a Save button!”
The show itself has unusual staging, with the main stage projecting quite a way out into the auditorium, and PA system set up ‘in-the-round’ rather than as a traditional left-right system. Ebdon’s FOH mix position is to one side of the stage, facing a single line of D&B speakers, and has to pay particular attention to tonal balance, because of limitations on bass cab placement.
“We did four weeks of band rehearsals for this show, so I had time to fine tune mixes and hone instrument sounds. I was using the L200 as a recording console for some of it, so I could record mixes and play them back to the band.
“Once we got to our first arena for production rehearsals, those mixes translated really well onto the big sound system; I was really pleased with the sound quality and the way it all worked out.”