With a career that spans three decades and having topped the country’s national album chart nine times, Sergio Dalma is one of Spain’s best-selling recording artists. 2022 saw him tour his latest album, Alegria (Joy), throughout Spain and South America. Spanish rental company USE SONIDO supplied DiGiCo Quantum consoles at both the front of house and monitor positions, purchased from DiGiCo’s Spanish distributor, RMS Pro Audio.
“We started working with Sergio Dalma over 15 years ago,” said Use, USE SONIDO’s owner. “We have worked on many tours whit him always using DiGiCo consoles at front of house, and more recently we have them at the monitor world, too.
Originally, the company had SD7 and SD10 consoles in its inventory, which it relied on for many years, but recently decided to upgrade to an SD Quantum 7, adding the Quantum 338 as soon as it became available to replace its SD10s, ensuring it has the most up-to-date DiGiCo products in its rental stock.
The consoles immediately went out with Sergio Dalma, the SD Quantum 7 taking up the front of house position, manned by FOH engineer Oscar Vinader, and the Quantum 338 with Alberto Cid on monitors.
“Whenever we invest in a new console, we make sure the engineers who are going to use them are fully trained on them, and we’ve had great support from DiGiCo and RMS ProAudio for this,” Use continues. “Once everything is explained – the graphic environment, the layout of the menus, the ergonomics of the encoders, etc., – it makes them really easy and intuitive to work, which makes everyone understand that a lot of thought there has gone into the choice of our systems.”
This is the second tour with Dalma using the SD7Quantum and Q338 combination, along with an SD-Rack with SD 32-Bit mic preamps. Both Oscar and Alberto are delighted with the consoles. They have the utmost confidence in them and are delighted with both the results and the reliability of the system.
“I usually do the setup with the offline software at home,” notes Vinader. “I start from Sessions where I already have my route of Aux Sends, Groups and FX. If there is something that the SD7 has, it’s the convenience of being able to work with Snapshots with the timecode. This allows me to memorize everything track by track, fxs, pans, delays times, and synchronize everything with the stage and lighting.”
“I spent a lot of time to the structuring of the console,” says Alberto. “In monitor world, which is where I usually work, you need to optimise time. For many years, I have put the effect return after the instruments. For example, with the acoustic I have FX AC, all the drums and then FX drum. This saves a lot of time when mixing because for each Send I would have the return at hand and not in a different FX layer as I did before. There are a lot of useful features: Aux Send in the Control Group means I can lower the whole band to the artist, for example, with a single fader, whilst Nodal Process, which has allowed me to stop double channelling.”
During rehearsals for Alegria at USE SONIDO, Alberto decided to make more use of the Quantum 338’s Mustard channels. “The result was really surprising,” he concludes. “It achieved a mix with more definition and presence that even the musicians themselves perceived as a notable jump in quality. I also started to work with the Spice Rack, inserting the Chilli 6 in the Master Mix for Mastering and I’m really happy with it.”
