Wang Feng sets out on The Times Tour, in celebration of album 29, Guoling Lane; with a DiGiCo SD7 at FOH, and an SD5 at monitors, supplied by RACpro, sitting at the heart of the tour’s audio system.
Shaogang Jin, Wang Feng’s chief FOH engineer and sound designer, is no stranger to such productions. He and Guobang Lu made good use of the SD7 at FOH, with monitor engineers Yong Shao and Longfei Ai utilising the SD5. Shaogang Lin said that the choice of mixing consoles is based on their incredible sound quality and powerful processing.
The DiGiCo SD7 has a total of 72 inputs and 24 outputs, with monitors again using 72 inputs, but double the outputs. Whist neither console was maxed out, having the ability to easily increase the input and output channel count proved incredibly useful.
“We have found the Waves Integration, DigiTube and Dynamic EQ on the consoles particularly useful,” said Guobang Lu. “We have full access to Waves plug-ins and can adjust the plug-in parameters directly with the ‘touch and turn’ encoder on the console worksurface. It’s very powerful, really useful and makes mixing way more convenient.”
Adding authentic analogue style warmth to the show, DiGiCo’s DiGiTube technology has been of particular importance to Wang Feng’s production, bringing a much needed classic rock sound to the show. With the tour’s hectic schedule, having a system that is easy and intuitive to use was essential.
“As the signal processing is inside the console, it doesn’t need a DSP rack and means we just need to connect the fibre cables to the SD-RACK and the system is ready to go. It really couldn’t be easier,” concluded Guobang Lu. “And that has the added advantage that we just need just 2 flight cases worth of equipment, which is a great saving on truck space.”