MOSCOW – Sound Image is serving as production partner for Billy Idol's current tour, and despite firm roots in the analog era, engineer Matt LaVoice is using a DiGiCo D1 for the blond rocker, guitarist Steve Stevens, bassist Stephen McGrath, keyboardist Derek Sherinian and newcomers Billy Morrison on rhythm guitar and Jeremy Colson on drums.
"I was a full-on analog guy," noted LaVoice, who converted to digital with DiGiCo several years ago, using an SD7 for tours with Idol and Lenny Kravitz in 2009. "Prying that 4km out of my hands was a tough one. But frankly, the D1 was the closest thing to an analog console I'd found. It does absolutely everything I need, and has exactly just the right amount of processing on it.
"The surface is very intuitive and is a joy to mix on," LaVoice added. "It's a tiny desk, which is good for a lot of the places we play. And it's eliminated all of the outboard gear I used to need for mixing in-ears and wedges-which made my production manager happy… He's glad that I don't have a big old analog desk and racks to fit on stage anymore."
With an input list consisting of 48-for drums, two guitars, bass, keys and Billy, who also plays acoustic and electric guitar-LaVoice is also managing five stereo PM outputs, as well as six mixes, drum shaker and sidefills.
"Having all of the onboard processing has allowed my mixes to evolve on stage. I used to travel around with only two reverbs and that was it. Now I can actually to do a lot more," LaVoice said. "I use six channels of graphics and I can utilize the rest of my effects now and it has really fattened up the ear mixes quite a bit. Also, I used to take that 4km because I liked the onboard EQ for ears, and the D1's processing channel now handles that. One of my guys wears one in-ear and listens to wedges. With the simple delay, I can delay the in-ear to his wedges, which cleans things up considerably."
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