DiGiCo/Optocore Network Propels Streisand's Back to Brooklyn

	Reitzas, Carlton, Suib, Newton, Gilpatric, PA tech Danny Badorine, PA tech Brandon Allison, PA tech Ricky Avila, Colby, Weibel, RF engineer Jason Brace, audio stage tech Tom Ford, monitor assistant Chris Fulton. Photo by Matt Larson

Barbra Streisand's Back to Brooklyn tour, a 12-date run of fall shows, brought the singer back to her roots in Brooklyn, New York in the city's new Barclays Center. She jokingly mentioned that the last time she performed in the borough was "on somebody's stoop on Pulaski Street" as an 8-year-old. Each of the Back to Brooklyn tour shows featured Streisand performing alongside a 72-piece orchestra, a rhythm section of studio stalwarts from Los Angeles, and an 80-piece guest choir in each city.

Sound designer Chris Carlton teamed with Digico and Clair Global in September to build and program the new gear for the tour. With a team of 12 engineers on deck, the updated system was comprised of six consoles in five mix locations: front-of-house (Carlton on an SD7 with Kevin Gilpatric on an SD7-EX007 expander), artist monitors (SD7 run by Ian Newton), band monitors (Blake Suib on an SD10), orchestra mix stems (Steve Colby on an SD10), and David Reitsaz on an Avid Icon in the M3 Music Mix Mobile truck. All the engineers shared the 170+ inputs, generated from one central SD system rack and linked solely by a Digico/Optocore 2GHz fiber optics network running at 96kHz. The rack's third MADI port handled live down-conversion from the 96kHz to 48kHz, which fed to the mobile truck as well as to a backup redundant recording system.

"The audio production on this tour has evolved slightly from what we've done in the past only because of the newer technology that was available to us," Carlton explains. "In the past, our system involved a lot of analog splits and another digital console, which worked well for us, but this is a much better, streamlined solution for having multiple mixers online with no passive splitters involved. Having an all-digital fiber optic distribution network ensured that we had no additional unwanted loading on the microphones, too."

"A similar number of inputs using individual stage racks and analog splits would require 15 racks and three to four times the amount of physical space," Streisand tour crew chief Bob Weibel says. "The best thing about the consoles," Carlton explains, "is how flexible they are. When we were thrown the last minute addition of an 80-piece choir, we were able to adapt and suggest a few different solutions. I could add an additional 20 inputs to cover the choir with plenty of space to spare."

"The Digico consoles paired with Clair Global's innovative i-5 line array system with full-range cabs proved to be a stunning sonic combination," Carlton says. The standard PA configuration is 16 x i-5s in the front PA, left and right, plus 12-high stacks that are the side-facing element of that front PA. The i-3 line arrays, which are 10 cabs high, covered the rear corners of the arena. Positioned underneath the stage were four i-5b subwoofers spaced individually across the front of the stage to add a little bit of low end for first few rows.

Carlton brought in Colby to handle the orchestral stem mixes on an SD10. "One of the real treats for me was the addition of the DigiTube Tube Emulation on the SD10, which was added with the most recent software upgrade (5.3.2, available for all Digico consoles)," Colby says. "So if you're a guy like me who deals with strings a lot, it's great to have something overall to warm up the signal. You have the clarity and the noise floor of the digital signal, coupled with the warm analog fuzziness of the DigiTubes. It's a terrific combination for us."

"With Barbra, we tried to spread the labor around in specialized areas," Colby continues. "We're taking all of the microphones from the orchestra and breaking them down into submixes that go off to other mixers in the system. The matrix capability lets me set up a different listening mix on every song, so it helps me to stay honest to the boys that I'm providing feeds for. Having a really deep snapshot automation that can drill all the way down into the matrix inputs and levels is incredibly powerful. The snapshot recall automation on the console is fabulous, too. I like that you can build your own macros."

Suib attends to band monitors on an SD10 rig upstage center under the deck. The console, run primarily in conjunction with an Aviom system, is used to generate submixes that are fed to the string section's in-ear monitors or to various band members with their own adjustable Aviom rigs. "We've simplified our whole patching world," he explains, "which is huge as far as the logistics. With this new approach, all of the engineers had to agree on something that we stuck with. Traditionally, most award shows and the like use shared stage racks, but that rarely happens on tours. With the Digico gain tracking, we each had our own independence. We were able to set the input gains on the first day, make maybe a couple of tweaks here and there for the different zones, and were able to lock that down. Each engineer could change his own digital trim to boost or reduce the level on the discrete channel, or, if we wanted to make an over-tone change in the mic preamp, we could adjust the mic pre."

For Streisand, Newton is feeding a stereo pair mix to 40 wedges around the stage. "As she walks around the stage, I send a mix that I flare through the wedge wherever she is, so we don't have them blowing into her orchestra mics," he says. "She gets a balanced mix of everything and everyone uses the wedges with the exception of Il Volo, who are all on in-ears. I'm taking stems from the orchestra from Steve, which helps out and cuts down a bit of mixing on my end. Because I'm sending the same mix to all the wedges, I'm using the copy to mix feature in the SD7 pretty heavily on the outputs."