SYDNEY – The Sarah McLachlan-led Lilith Tour 2010 suffered a number of setbacks, including the cancellation of a number of shows due to soft ticket sales, but McLachlan and her supporters still managed to raise money for women's causes, and McLachlan pressed on with an abridged, five-stop version of the tour in Australia, joined by Kate Miller-Heidke and the Verses.
Jands Production Services provided crew and gear for that tour leg, and McLachlan's FOH engineer for over 20 years, Gary Stokes, used a Soundcraft Vi6 digital mixing console, which he first became acquainted with while mixing for French-American singer Madeleine Peyroux. McLachlan also used AKG 535 Eb stage microphones for backup vocals during her set.
"[Peyroux] was opening for Diana Krall, whose FOH guy uses a Soundcraft Vi6," Stokes noted, adding that there were several key things about the desk that appealed to him, starting with price. "The Soundcraft Vi6 delivers value for money, meeting most of my needs at a lower price point than other digital consoles.
It's not all about the money, however. "I would say its prime attraction is its user-configurability," Stokes said. "I really like Version 4 of the Soundcraft software as it allows more flexibility when configuring the faders to be different things. They've implemented their user layers on their fader pages and that allows you to customize different layers to be different things."
Stokes also credited the Soundcraft Vi6 for power and flexibility. "I like the way the I/Os are situated," he said. "You have a lot of patch points situated on the FOH rack as well as the stage, so you can make anything go anywhere pretty easily. That's a powerful advantage over other systems.
"I also like the MADI card capability of the Soundcraft Vi6," Stokes added, calling it "a big deal for me. It's important to be able to work inter-operatively with other manufacturer's equipment, different recorders and splitters."
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