AVNation TV

Tag: Quantum225

  • The Phil Collins Story Relies on DiGiCo and KLANG More Than One More Night

    The Phil Collins Story Relies on DiGiCo and KLANG More Than One More Night

    It’s a live show. It’s a film. It’s all of the above and then some. The Phil Collins Story, a docu-concert celebrating the life, career, and music of Academy Award, Grammy, and Golden Globe-winning performer and songwriter Phil Collins, debuted February 3 at the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York and then embarked on a 50-city North American tour. Chronicling Collins’ chart-topping time from Genesis to his celebrated solo career, The Phil Collins Story brings the artist’s distinctive music to life in a way that resonates with audiences visually and emotionally, featuring state-of-the-art audio, dynamic projections, and intricate lighting.

    That audio for the show is delivered through a DiGiCo Quantum225 console, provided by Clair Global, managing both front-of-house and monitor duties, with the latter critically utilizing a DiGiCo DMI-KLANG card for signal distribution and control, paired with iPads running KLANG:app for the musicians on stage.

    “It’s not really a film or just a concert—it’s a multimedia experience with live music,” explains Theodore “Ted” Woolsey, who did the sound design and mixes the live sound for the project, working with A2 Ethan Ginsburg-Margo. “It’s the story of Phil’s life and it goes through a lot of the stories and all the hits, including with Genesis, with live musicians onstage. It’s pretty spectacular.”

    The show is true to Collins’ unique sonic signatures, including the Sennheiser 421 microphones that captured his iconic heavily-gated tom-tom fills on songs like “In the Air Tonight.” Woolsey also points out that the show is live in more ways than one: while a click track is used for the musicians, the entire production is, like much of Collins’ own career, very analog: sound, lighting, and video all operate independently of each other, relying on their respective managing engineers to keep the show together.

    “The show starts with the music director running a Logic session with a click track off of his laptop next to his keyboard,” he explains. “That goes to the six musicians in the band through the KLANG:app on their iPads, and it also cues the lighting and video operators, who have their own KLANG mix as well as the click. When they hear the click, they start the show manually.”

    The DiGiCo Quantum225 console is the hub for all of this, paired with some choice, authentically-vintage Phil Collins outboard gear like Bricasti reverbs and the Yamaha SPX2000 multi-effects processor, as well as some more modern Waves plugins.

    “The Q225 lets me manage everything easily from a single surface,” he says. “And I designed the setup so that there’s no need for a monitor engineer—I’m using KLANG so that the musicians can mix themselves. The intuitive KLANG:app interface makes personal mixing easy for them, while the immersive mix engine helps them find the right balance much more quickly.”

    “It’s really cool how I can split up audio in so many different places through so many different ‘languages,’ like through MADI, Cat5, and over fiber,” Woolsey adds. “In this case, the whole system is one Cat5 line with the DMI-KLANG card out of the console into an access point that drives all the iPads. Typically, if you were going to split up monitors, you’d have to have a split snake where you would drive all the inputs in a secondary way into another rack that goes and distributes into the in-ears. But with the DMI-KLANG, it’s all shared off a single SD-Rack, so there’s no split. It’s all digital through the one Cat5 line. That’s it, that’s the whole system—there’s no split snake rack, no networking rack. It’s just shared off the same I/O and it’s all going through this access point into the KLANG.” The simplicity of the signal path, he adds, contributes greatly to reducing the potential for any failure.

    In addition, the entire show is programmed with snapshots so that during the initial rehearsals each of the musicians dialed in all of their individual mix levels per song. “Then I saved that data with the snapshots, so when I hit the next song, it changes their mix automatically to the mix that they dialed in for each song,” he says. “The combination of the Quantum and the KLANG is like having a monitor engineer that knows the whole show, but each musician is handling it themselves. And I like giving control to the musicians; they can easily make their own monitor tweaks through KLANG:app, focus on their playing, and be fully immersed in the show. And that also lets me focus on the live show and my front-of-house mix. Really, it’s the best way this show could be done.”

  • Good Shepherd Church Pairs DiGiCo Quantum225 FOH Console with KLANG:vokal+ for Immersive IEM Mixing

    Good Shepherd Church Pairs DiGiCo Quantum225 FOH Console with KLANG:vokal+ for Immersive IEM Mixing

    A good shepherd carefully tends the flock wherever it roams, and in the case of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Good Shepherd Church, that flock has become quite widespread over the past 35 years. Started in 1991, the church now holds four Sunday worship gatherings—three in English and one in Spanish—as well as for people all over the world through its online services. But Good Shepherd is as tech-savvy as it is devout, and its technology choices, including the addition of a DiGiCo Quantum225 FOH console paired with the new KLANG:vokal+ as part of its IEM mixing world, reflect that.

    “Our previous console was about 16 years old and definitely showing its age,” says Good Shepherd Worship Arts Pastor Chris Macedo. “It was an early-generation digital console, quite large and cumbersome, and limited in both input count and functionality. It also lacked some of the capabilities we wanted, such as virtual soundcheck, automation features, and easy integration with external processing, so it was ultimately time for an upgrade.”

    When evaluating replacement options, the church initially didn’t look at DiGiCo solutions, figuring that the brand’s products would be out of its price range, but the Quantum225 “changed everything,” Macedo says. “Our technical director saw it, and it immediately stood out as a unique opportunity. It landed just above the price range we had been considering, but it made entering the Quantum ecosystem possible in a way that simply hadn’t been possible before. Without the Q225, we would not have been able to make that move.”

    The church purchased the console from Charlotte-based dealer/integrator World-Class Acoustical Visual Elements (WAVE), which upgraded the room’s acoustics and retuned the sanctuary’s existing PA at the same time, collectively revitalizing the space. Good Shepherd’s technical team personally handled the installation of the console, and although they had not mixed on a DiGiCo desk prior to putting in the Quantum225, the crew’s impressions were very positive.

    “There was a noticeable increase in overall fidelity and clarity,” says Macedo. “The mix now feels more detailed and articulate, and the way frequencies sit in the room feels more balanced and controlled. The workflow improvements were also significant; moving between layers, organizing inputs, and navigating the console are far more efficient than what we had before.”

    The Quantum225 controls Good Shepherd’s FOH mix—with 48 inputs typically feeding into the desk—while the KLANG system handles all monitor mixing. A significant portion of the church’s audio infrastructure is Dante-based, accommodated via a DMI-DANTE64@96 card primarily used to receive audio from the DSP and route out to a DiGiCo DQ-Rack that services the drums and feeds wireless in-ear monitor system. A smaller DiGiCo Dante A168D STAGE rack is also deployed on the opposite side of the stage. “We send a lot of individual instrument channels using Dante Virtual Soundcard as well as from our Shure ULXD microphones,” Macedo adds.

    Prior to installing the console, the church considered building a separate production suite with a dedicated broadcast mixer, but that plan wasn’t deemed viable. “Instead, we worked with WAVE to improve the acoustics in the room, with the hope that if we paired that with the right console, we could deliver a mix that translates well both in the room and online. Now, when someone watches on YouTube or our website, they are essentially hearing the same mix that is coming through front of house. We simply send that mix out through another group and apply some very basic tone shaping and leveling with a limiter to prepare it for the online platforms. In other words, it’s more or less the same mix—just slightly optimized for streaming—and it works very well.”

    Building upon the KLANG:vokal platform that the church first implemented in 2021, the church also recently enhanced its original KLANG:vokal processor with the :vokal+ upgrade, which boosted it to 64 mono channels on each of the 12 immersive in-ear mixes, and KLANG parametric Root/Intensity EQs for all 64 mono inputs and all 12 mixes.

    Between the KLANG:vokal+ and DiGiCo Quantum225, the church has what Macedo says is an ultimately streamlined workflow. It’s one that requires fewer hands on deck for Sunday services but that still delivers impactful modern worship music to attendees and a completely customizable experience for musicians onstage.

    “The KLANG:vokal+ upgrade brought us from 24 channels to 64, a huge step up,” he says, “and gave certain musicians, such as our drummers, tons more flexibility in terms of setting up the percussion space for everyone. They can put exactly what they need on their KLANG:kontroller or their iPad, set it, and forget it.”

    Macedo says the immersive 3D capability of the KLANG:vokal+ has given everyone onstage a fantastic space in which to perform. “All of our vocalists use it, all of our drummers use it,” he says. “A lot of our inputs are in stereo, so having that immersive space really helps them to dial in the width and the placement of everything inside of the mix. And they love it!”

    “Pre-KLANG, we didn’t really use a lot of stereo inputs inside of our monitoring setup, so when we moved to this, having stereo available to us just because of the increased channel count allowed for everything to open up even further. Specifically, our guitar players were just ecstatic because they had been running in mono only, so to be able to hear their instrument coming through the way they always imagined it would sound, with delay and reverb effects, really made a huge difference. It let them translate what they imagined into a reality in their ears.”

    The church’s KLANG:vokal+ is integrated as an outboard unit, connected to the console via MADI. Macedo says they use about 10 of the 12 possible mixes each Sunday, with every user able to balance their own monitor mix directly from either a KLANG:kontroller or from an iPad. “I’ve looked into the idea of fully integrating KLANG with the console, which can be done,” he says. “But we just haven’t found a use case that makes a lot of sense for us yet since our setup is pretty static. But it’s nice to know that capability can easily be done.”

    Keeping musicians happy onstage goes a long way to making performances really stand out and engaging the audience. Macedo says the ability to create individual mixes achieves that for the church’s musicians, and it shows. “Our drummer, for instance, has the ability to literally curate the drums, to be exactly where he wants each of them,” he explains. “We can also send in our drum bus that has been mixed from front of house directly to everybody else, so they don’t have to worry about mixing the drums down to a really granular level—they can just have a nice stereo drum bus coming from the board. So everybody can really tailor every mix to exactly what they need.”

    In addition to the musicians, the house engineers are equally pleased—with so much of the monitoring in the hands of those who benefit from it the most they can focus on what the audience is experiencing. “The user experience is far superior and it really allows us not to be limited by what’s available on the console, because the :vokal+ is really doing all the work,” he says. “So it allows our front of house to really focus on front of house, and we don’t have to have someone who is constantly watching monitors. I mean, week to week, we sometimes never even touch the mixes. It just works rock solid every time, and it makes Sunday very, very easy and enjoyable.”

  • Palace Theatre Fit for a King with New DiGiCo Quantum225 Desks

    Palace Theatre Fit for a King with New DiGiCo Quantum225 Desks

    The Palace Theatre has hosted everything America has celebrated in the last 100 or so years: marquee-level entertainment, Roaring ‘20s gangsters, and one of the city’s and the country’s finest movie palaces of its day. After its inevitable decline in the urbanization of the 1970s, it was rescued by the city a century after its founding in 1916 and renovated as a live music destination.

    Within a few months of the revived Palace’s first show in March of 2017, the 2,500-capacity venue was once again a leading national music venue, now co-managed and co-operated by hometown First Avenue Productions and Chicago-based Jam Productions. After being fitted that year with a new L-Acoustics K2 PA system, the Palace Theatre has just capped off a nearly decade-long revival with a new pair of DiGiCo Quantum225 consoles, one each at front of house and monitors. Both were sold through and installed by local integrator and rental vendor Allied Productions & Sales.

    After nursing the venue’s nearly decade-old consoles along for years, Randy Hawkins, head audio engineer/A1 at the Palace, says the arrival of the new DiGiCo desks has been “a game-changer here. I’ve been touring with a 225 with the band Atmosphere for over three years now and I love it, and it’s the perfect choice for this venue. The thinking had originally been to go with no consoles at all, since so many artists tour with their own. But more and more of them tour with DiGiCo, or are at least very familiar with the DiGiCo worksurface. So by having that here, ready for them to plug their files into, we’re really building the model for the future of touring,” at a time when costs and logistics are paramount, he believes.

    Hawkins says choosing the same console for both FOH and monitors further supports that approach, with engineers able to move positions as needed without changing their worksurfaces. “The DiGiCo worksurface is instantly familiar to the majority of touring engineers out there,” he says confidently. “Very few need any tutorial on them, and most visiting engineers will just plug in their files and go.”

    Like other engineers, Hawkins, who says he’ll mix the occasional opening act at the venue each week, is a fan of the Quantum’s processing. “I enjoy the Spice Rack the most, though Mustard is cool, too,” he says. “When you factor those in, you realize that this was a massive upgrade for the room’s sound, and the consoles bring huge new firepower with them. Plus, First Avenue, our sister venue, also has Quantum225 consoles, so what we’ve done is built a Quantum ecosystem between them, one that also has L-Acoustics sound systems in both — L2 at First Avenue and K2 here. Mix engineers can seamlessly move between the venues and find the same great interfaces in both. It’s a good place to be.”

  • Warren Zeiders, Out on Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken Tour, is Perfectly Put Together with DiGiCo Quantum225 Consoles

    Warren Zeiders, Out on Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken Tour, is Perfectly Put Together with DiGiCo Quantum225 Consoles

    When you’re opening for Jelly Roll, you have to be able to stake your place on stage and stand your ground. That’s just what fast-rising singer and songwriter Warren Zeiders is doing as he opens for the country/rap juggernaut on his Beautifully Broken Tour, which kicked off at Delta Center in Salt Lake City on August 27th and makes stops in numerous major markets across the U.S., including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, before wrapping up at Charlotte’s Spectrum Center on October 27th.

    “Pure, raw, unadulterated, gritty, supernal, starpower talent”—that’s how Americana Highways describes the Hershey, Pennsylvania native’s sound and presence. The title track of the first of Zeiders’ two studio albums, “Pretty Little Poison,” became a number-one country radio hit, eventually helping him nab the role of direct support on Jelly Roll’s latest arena tour. And two DiGiCo consoles are along for that wonderful ride: a Quantum225 at front of house, piloted by FOH engineer Ben Ivey, and another at monitors, operated by mixer Adam Snyder, with all hardware provided by Sound Image, a Clair Global company.

    “It’s the cleanest pre-amp on the market,” says Ivey of the Quantum225’s mic pre’s housed in the SD-Rack that he and Snyder share on an Optocore network loop. “There’s zero coloration to anything to do with the input, which means that everything that I do in front of house as far as the microphone we pick, the vocal chain we pick, the sound gets colored the way it needs to be. And the onboard processing gives me a ton of tonal and dynamic options. For instance, for a while this year I was using the Chilli 6 quite a lot on Warren’s vocal,” he says of the Quantum’s six-band, dynamic, multiband compressor/expander with two independent fourth-order parametric EQ bands.

    According to Ivey, “Quantum’s supreme flexibility has been a game-changer,” he says. “The thing that I love the most is you can make any input anywhere, do anything you need it to, and sound any way it needs to. Between the way it sounds and the way it accommodates my workflow, there’s nothing else like it.”

    Monitor engineer Adam Snyder, who first encountered the Quantum225 on tour with CCM artist Jeremy Camp last year, is having a similarly enjoyable time on the desk, especially when it comes to operational flexibility. “I switched my artist off of auxes and onto groups, so his mix goes through groups before it hits his ears, and I’m using the Chilli 6 and Naga 6 dynamic EQ the Spice Rack processing now has onboard,” he explains. “Putting that across the groups has really helped me help Warren’s vocal cut through in the mix as the band gets louder.”

    And having all the processing he needs in the console assures that there’s no delay. “It’s more robust having it all in the box than having a separate software rack, because sometimes even hardware can fail on the road, so having it all built in is really nice,” he says.

    Ivey seconds that, noting, “He’s one of the more dynamic singers I’ve ever worked with,” he says. “Has a very wide range of tone, but also a lot of grit, and the smoothness of the DiGiCo really helps his vocal sound very natural—not super bright or not super low-end heavy. The Quantum processing and the DPA VL4018 vocal mic he’s using are a great combination.”

    Snyder also experiences that vocal dynamism, especially in the form of his ability to project. “His vocal shifts tonally a lot the louder he gets, and I’m using a lot of the onboard processing to help smooth that out,” he says. “Also, for the band—who are all on ears—I love how neutral the pre-amps are for monitors. I’m trying to let the band hear what they’re giving me so that they can make choices onstage in tone or in how they play, and having a really neutral pre-amp helps in that. But I also love that if I need to, there is stuff onboard that I can color the sound with and help them. But from a starting point, it’s nice and neutral and true to what the source is.”

    What both Ivey and Snyder agree on is that the Quantum225 console lets them let that voice tell its own tales. “We’re here to make sure that every bit of him comes through to every seat,” says Ivey, “and this console helps us do that.”