VERONA, Italy — Two DiGiCo SD7 consoles played a key role at a unique event recently staged in Verona’s famous Arena. Although renowned for summer seasons that attract opera fans from all over the world, the ancient Roman walls hosted a run of seven concerts by Italian rocker Luciano Ligabue, his band and a full symphony orchestra.
The consoles, two of the four delivered to rental firm Agorà, were taken on their first outing, along with two D5 Live desks, by the show’s audio contractor Nuovo Service, and manned by two of the country’s best known sound engineers: Daniele Tramontani (FOH) and Stevan Martinovic (monitors).
Out front, Tramontani, whose skills as a sound designer have been appreciated through the years with concerts by Ennio Morricone, Turin’s Winter Olympics, the beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a production of Aida at Seoul Olympic Stadium and several editions of the Pavarotti & Friends charity shows, was back to his roots behind a console. After mixing the 70-piece Verona Philharmonic Orchestra, he fed a pair of sub mixes (one of the strings, the other the rest of the instruments) to FOH engineer Alberto Butturini, who mixed them on a D5 Live with the 60 channels arriving from the artist and his band.
The same console combination was used on-stage for the sound fed to the orchestra members’ headphones and the band’s IEM systems, where Martinovic was assisted by Umberto Polidori.
Although setting up the desk for 150 channels, Tramontani didn’t need to use them all but, with numerous bug mics used to keep sound spill from the band to a minimum, eventually mixed approximately 110 and was very pleased with the results.
“The SD7 is really fantastic, magnificent!,” says Tramontani. “I used 32 VCAs, 20 stereo groups and 20 stereo sends, so there were some big figures in there, but I didn’t use much of its incredible potential – such as the memories for example. However, seven concerts and the relative rehearsals were sufficient for me to realize that it’s definitely a great console. I also designed the sound rig for the shows and was particularly impressed with the console’s filters – it sounds great.”
Butturini, who has used D5 Live consoles for years on tours by Italian chart-toppers such as Claudio Baglioni, also managed to get an insight of the SD7 during rehearsals with the orchestra and commented, “It seems a really fantastic desk, offering great possibilities—it can handle an incredible number of channels and I can’t wait to take it out on the next important tour I do.”
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