LONDON — FOH Engineer Dale Hanson took time off the road to handle eight different acts at the Bedford in London, and mixed on a Soundcraft Si3 — its first public commercial gig. Along with the other Si3 beta testers covering theatre, touring and house-of-worship applications in Europe and the U.S., Hanson has taken the Si3 through its test paces, but this gig was the ultimate beta test.
"The show was a bit like live TV with eight acts performing a couple of songs each during the evening without any change over time at all really,” Hanson says. “Not many digital consoles can cope with that type of challenge, but the Si3 worked really well. I found that you can use so many different functions at the same time to be really useful. Having control of EQ, Dynamics, Bus Sends and Effects without having to reassign anything was great."
"The pre amps sounded really nice and had plenty of headroom,” Hanson adds. “I found that I needed minimal EQ on the night, which is always a good sign. The dynamics were easy-to-use and sounded smooth. I particularly liked the Lexicon reverbs, as they sounded great. The fact that the FX returns appear as normal channels is also great as I could easily send one effect into another; for example; very analogue!"
"It was a great feeling to see the Si3 go through its paces in a real-life situation," said Shears. "We'll be running a series of Si3 gigs to provide engineers the chance to come and play with it after the launch at PLASA."
Hanson is the FOH Engineer for The Story’s, Elton John’s recent tour support band.
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