LONDON — British alt-rock band Placebo have been out on a full world tour since January 2006, playing events and major festivals throughout the U.S., South America, Europe, Australia, China, Korea, and other Far East locations. For the first year of the tour, monitor engineer Charlie Bradley used a VENUE D-Show console, but in the last six months, he and Placebo FOH mixer Ian Nelson, switched to using a pair of the more compact VENUE D-Show Profile systems, which handle a total of 45 inputs for the band, along with the collective output requirements. By the tour’s conclusion, Bradley estimates that they will have used the VENUE systems at over 250 shows. Bradley has been impressed with VENUE, “I’ve used digital consoles for many years now, and VENUE was very quick to learn,” says Bradley. “You can see everything very easily from the screen or console surface — with plenty of button shortcuts. You can quickly navigate across the screen layers, too.” He continued, “The sonic quality of the VENUE consoles, in my opinion, is unsurpassed.”
VENUE is designed to run TDM plug-ins to streamline outboard audio hardware requirements while simultaneously providing users with a broad selection of processing options and making it possible to load all plug in settings as part of a single show file. VENUE also is able to run Pro Tools plug-in effects natively, eliminating the need to employ a second computer system just for the plug-ins.
According to Bradley,“Having Pro Tools for playback through Virtual Soundcheck means we can have a more accurate picture of what the band will sound like in the venue, and this has sped up the sound check process ten-fold. Also, having continuous access to these recordings of sessions and shows, means Ian or I can provide mixes for TV broadcast etc. from live shows and control the quality of the bands output.”
For more information, please visit www.digidesign.com/venue.
