DALY CITY, CA — David Morgan and Brian Hendry recently worked together on Stevie Nicks’ Crystal Visions tour, which featured dual VENUE D-Show consoles, with Morgan handling FOH duties and Hendry handling monitors.
Morgan, whose clientele also includes Steely Dan and Paul Simon, had been a die-hard analog enthusiast, but got his first taste of VENUE while on tour with James Taylor earlier this year. Hendry, a longtime monitor engineer for Aerosmith, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Joss Stone and the Stray Cats, was impressed with the VENUE system’s Virtual Soundcheck feature, and immediately integrated it into his daily routine, making it easy for him to adapt his monitor mixes to any venue — with or without the band on stage.
“My first experience of the VENUE system on tour was with the [D-Show] Profile,” Morgan recalls. “I wanted a compact, full-featured digital audio desk for the theatre shows with James Taylor. I was very impressed with the mic pres, the A/D converters, the EQ and onboard dynamics. The software is rock-solid, and the hardware is built for the road. I knew that with the application of the plug-ins, I would easily be able to move away from my favorite analog desk and outboard devices with no concerns.”
Not only did VENUE and its TDM plug-in processing allow Morgan to step away from his analog comforts and collection of outboard gear, he found that transitioning to the digital realm was easy thanks to the intuitiveness of the D-Show and D-Show Profile consoles. “No other digital console gives me access to so much information on each screen,” he explains, “and the large size of the display also makes operating in the dark a breeze. From the patchbay to the outputs, this is the easiest system I have employed for getting a mix show ready. In short, I feel VENUE is the best-sounding digital platform. The hardest thing to re-create is a warm, realistic vocal sound, and yet both the James Taylor and Stevie Nicks shows have been glowingly reviewed with specific mention of the outstanding quality of the vocals.”
Morgan finds it hard to imagine how anyone could tour with effects racks filled with all of the same hardware counterparts to the VENUE plug-ins he employs nightly, including Bomb Factory and Fairchild plug-ins that replicate vintage tube compressors, which are often too fragile or too valuable to take on the road.
“The cost of renting this selection of gear would be prohibitive to say the least,” he muses. “I’m able to use separate reverbs for vocals, acoustic guitars, keyboards, drums, percussion. I also have separate pitch changers on lead vocals [and] background vocal as well as three different delay devices. I employ a variety of compressors on all of the melodic instruments — try doing that with a sound company’s stock inventory and still stay within the constraints of a modern production budget.”
With the VENUE system’s integration with Pro Tools systems, Hendry can refine his multiple monitor mixes whenever he wants — without having to have the band on stage — by simply playing back the previous night’s multitrack recorded show through the D-Show. He can then add plug-ins, adapt effects and adjust balances to fine-tune his mixes.
For Nicks’ vocal, Hendry uses a Sennheiser 935 vocal mic in tandem with Crane Song Phoenix Luster, the Digidesign Smack! compressor, and Digidesign Reverb One. “This [the VENUE plug-in processing], along with her amazing vocal, makes it a joy to mix,” Hendry enthuses.
For information, please visit www.digidesign.com/venue
