Audio supervisor and sound engineer Derrick Zieba has been using a Midas XL8 live performance system for two recent events in London: the Classic BRIT Awards at the Royal Albert Hall and Rock Choir at Wembley Arena.
Although Zieba has specified the Midas XL8 in his role as audio supervisor for high profile events such as the BRIT Awards and previous Classic BRITs, this year’s Rock Choir at Wembley Arena saw him behind the controls for the first time.
The Rock Choir phenomenon has swept the UK, with regional choirs coming together to sing rock, pop, gospel and Motown classics. Around 7,000 members of the regional choirs performed at the special Wembley gig, which was filmed as part of a TV documentary.
For this application, Zieba made extensive use of the XL8’s ‘mix minus’ feature. This routes all channels to the bus by default, allowing the operator to choose which channels to switch off or ‘minus’ from that bus output. “With three quarters of Wembley taken up by participating choirs and only a quarter of actual audience, I needed the ability to switch outputs easily between a full mix including choir mics and a monitor mix without choir on certain speakers,” he explains. “The ‘mix minus’ feature made my job of satisfying two quite different audio requirements in the room considerably easier.”
A few days earlier, Zieba had again specified the XL8 for the Classic BRITs, which this year saw performances from Dame Shirley Bassey, Katherine Jenkins, Il DIvo and Russell Watson, with the London Chamber Orchestra.
“The use of the XL8 on last year’s show proved how much better it sounded on classical material than previous consoles,” says Zieba. “The challenge this year of switching quickly between 42 radio mic’d vocal inputs, plus live symphony orchestra for the Les Miserables performance to orchestra, plus live and recorded instrument tracks for other performances, was achieved seamlessly using the XL8’s input bussing system.”
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