DiGiCo Helps Build Bridges for RiseUp AS ONE Music Festival

	Promoted as a "celebration of music, diversity and unity," RiseUp AS ONE drew more than 15,000 to the San Diego concert site in mid-October.

"Bridges, not walls," is how news media globally encapsulated the message of RiseUp AS ONE, a live concert event held on the US-Mexico border in San Diego on Saturday, October 15. The event, produced jointly by the Fusion and Univision networks, and broadcast and streamed worldwide in both English and Spanish, featured a high-power lineup of Latino and Latina artists such as Alejandro Sanz, Miguel Bosé, Julieta Venegas, Los Tigres del Norte, Lupillo Rivera, Carlos Vives, and Natalia Lafourcade, as well as appearances from Gael Garcia Bernal, Wilmer Valderrama, and T Bone Burnett.

The free event, which drew some 15,000 attendees, was promoted as a "celebration of music, diversity, and unity," and artists and hosts Jorge Ramos and Alejandra Espinoza drove that message home throughout the night. Making sure that both message and music were heard loud and clear was a complement of five DiGiCo audio consoles: two SD7 desks at front-of-house, two more for monitors, and an SD10 used for production audio. SR provider 3G Productions supplied the consoles.

Howard "Howie" Lindeman and Ron Reaves manned the two SD7s used at FOH, while the two monitor consoles were similarly assigned and manned by Michael Bove and Stan George. The stage was set on a rotating platform with an A and a B side, with a house band set on the A side of the turntable, allowing a faster turnaround between artists. Lindeman mixed artists with their own bands on the B side and Reaves mixed artists who used the house band on side A. Behind them, an SD10 console was used as the production mixer for stage patter by hosts and incidental music playback into the PA system.

Asked about the SD7's performance at the event, Lindeman first called out the console's sonic qualities. "It just sounds amazing," he says. "But what's especially great about that is that you get there so quickly and easily. The RiseUp show was not one where we really had any time to get sounds together before a performance. On the SD7, I can just open a fader, adjust the trim and I already have a signal that's close to what it needs to be, completely uncolored. On other consoles I'd have to start working plug-ins and other processing to get there. It's really so close to analog the way the desk sounds. It lets you start building a mix immediately. That's a huge advantage on a show like this. In fact, both of the FOH consoles were loaded with Waves plug-ins on DiGiGrid, but I used nothing but the EQ, effects, and dynamics that are on the console itself. And I'm a Waves endorser!"

Reaves, who has used Digico consoles for the house mix on the Grammy Awards broadcasts for the past several years, says that the SD7's inherent great sound combines nicely with its ease of use. "You can put a mix together incredibly quickly, even under circumstances like those at this festival," he says. "You can put everything anywhere you want, so you build your own worksurface the way you want it. It has an enormous amount of firepower, in terms of processing."

Lindeman elaborated on that, crediting the SD7's newly implemented Stealth Core 2 processing, which was available on all of the Digico consoles used at RiseUp. "There was not a single glitch or bump in the road on the show," he says. "I'm very much from a recording studio background, and I like to mix live shows as though I was mixing a record. The SD7 lets me do that -- I can put everything where I want it on the console and in the soundfield. As a result, both Ron and I were able to put together our mixes quickly and accurately."

Reaves, who has been using the SD7 intensely for several years on a wide array of live events, says he was impressed by how quickly Lindeman became proficient on the desk. "It's as though he'd used it as long as I have," he says. "That's why I have no problem saying, it's just the best console ever."

To view the complete RiseUp AS ONE concert, visit http://fusion.net/story/358416/watch-the-livestream-of-the-riseup-as-one-border-concert/. 3G Productions can be similarly found online at http://3glp.com/.