The triumphant return of ’90s Britpop poster boys Blur rocked the music world at the end of 2022, DiGiCo’s Quantum7 was the mixing desk of choice for the band’s biggest-ever headline shows, ensuring that the 180,000 fans that flocked to Wembley felt the full force of Blur’s back catalogue.
Monitor engineer Dave Guerin and FOH man Matt Butcher are long-standing Blur crew members and DiGiCo users. Back in 2015 when the band were last on the road, the two engineers were working on a pair of DiGiCo SD10 consoles: this time round, two DiGiCo Quantum7 desks.
“The Quantum7 is a different beast!” commented Guerin. “I now have 200 channels on the surface with 43 unused, 25 mono and 35 stereo aux with four unused, and 36 control groups with 11 unused. That channel count also includes inputs and outputs for the 34-person choir that joined us for the two Wembley shows. We added a third SD Rack with AES inputs and outputs on top of what we already had, and radio mics and IEMs for the choir. The Quantum7 accommodated it all without breaking a sweat and no additional desk or monitor engineer was required.”
Supplied by rental company Entec Sound and Light, Blur’s tour benefitted from two additional full SD Racks with 32-bit input cards and a mixture of line output and AES output cards, all on two Optocore loops. “We have a long association with Blur and have been supplying DiGiCo consoles to them for many years,” noted Entec’s Dan Scantelbury. “We’re always confident that they’ll deliver a rock-solid performance and meet Dave and Matt’s needs in terms of functionality and audio quality.” Entec also supplied a 192 channel record system that sits on one of the Optocore loops. “The benefits of having the record system on Optocore and not the usual MADI is that it works on both Engine A and Engine B of the FOH Quantum7 with just a couple of HMA connections. It also means that all 192 channels of playback are available at the monitor desk,” added Guerin.
“I basically fool my Quantum7 into thinking that those channels are its own record and playback channels by adding two DMI-BNC to my desk and then patching all the desk MADI outs back to MADI ins. A virtual soundcheck on monitors is as easy as at FOH. For me, this is a game changer. For example, the strings section were able to rehearse songs without the band having to be there,” explained Guerin
One of the positives of using DiGiCo SD and Quantum desks for Dave was that he was able to use iPad apps Faders and Macros from dgApps. “DiGiCo’s Mustard EQ is also great. I’ve moved quite a lot of channels over and drum sounds come easy, too,” commented Butcher. “The dynamic EQ is still useful in the precision EQ, but the mustard dynamics give more interesting options. For example, the FET compressor does a great 1176 style limit compressor for vocals.”
“The Quantum engine certainly brought the work surface up to a whole new level,” Butcher concluded. “The flexibility of the audio network and ease of use is second to none. Removing passive splits and all the connectors and cable impedances, including the preamp input really improved the clarity of signal, especially from the dynamic mic capsules. We have been rack-sharing and using this for Blur, Gorillaz and Damon’s solo projects, too. DiGiCo is the only way to go.”
