Back in February when tour preparations were in negotiations, monitor engineer Tony Luna staked his claim on a DiGiCo SD8-24. "The budget dictated that we had to use a smaller console than on previous tours and the SD8 had all the features and power that I was used to in the SD7. It was pretty much a no-brainer that that's what we were going to need on this tour. I had first mixed on one at the NAB convention this April and had a cool experience on it. Plus, the audio quality was excellent."
For Bieber's seven-piece band, Luna is utilising 53 channels overall. During the several weeks worth of rehearsals pre-tour he was able to pre-programme the basics of the show. Once the group commenced rehearsals, it made building his mixes that much easier. "Everything was already panned, I'd already assigned my filters, and set up my basic EQ shapes. Being able to build the mix from there saved me a lot of time once we were on site."
There is virtually no supplemental outboard gear being carried for the Bieber tour. Luna was able to find everything he needed onboard the SD8. "The console sounds so good that that there hasn't been a whole lot of supplemental stuff that I've really needed to use, with the exception of a pair of Lexicon PCM91s, one for Justin's vocal and one for the drum reverb. Onboard, I'm using all eight of the onboard effects and those are the acoustic guitar reverbs and vocal reverbs for the background singers, and a short verb for the DJ scratch channel to pull it out of your face.
"I'm also using a little bit of the dynamic EQ on Justin's vocals and a little bit of the dynamic compression on Justin's main mix and that's it out of the dynamic section. Oh, and on this show, because of the screaming girls and all that stuff, I've had to compress some things in the ear mixes. Having that functionality has really been great."
(Jim Evans)
