DiGiCo Consoles for Alex Warren's World Tour Singer-songwriter Alex Warren recently completed the North American leg of a six-month world tour, titled Finding Family on the Road, which previously took the Grammy-nominated artist and his band through Europe and has now moved on to Asia and Oceania. At front of house on the tour, James Butera is behind a DiGiCo Quantum338, while monitor engineer Rob Brazinski is mixing on a Quantum7, both supplied by tour sound provider Clair Global. Butera is a live sound jack-of-all-trades who has used DiGiCo desks throughout his career. "My history dates back to the SD7 and the good old SD8 gold-top," he says. "I've carried every surface but the Q852 so far, and hope to carry them for many more years." Butera, who also works extensively with Halsey, saw the equipment list grow as the Warren tour began to take shape in the planning phases. "Last fall we were a single SD-Rack and an Orange Box with MADI cards," he shares. "Now we've added a second Orange Box to handle 64 channels of Dante, a second SD-Rack, and an SD-Mini for our B-stage inputs and outputs. I had to add a second loop out front to get outboard in and out quickly, and because I maxed out all the MADI, analog, and AES local ports along with using both DMI slots locally," Butera explains. "I've almost maxed out the Q338 -- I think I have two outputs of DSP left. But I love the Q338. It's my favorite physical layout aside from the Q852, and I love the screens." Brazinski also appreciates his chosen console, having initially planned to take out a Quantum5 before he realized he could use the additional controls and DSP. "The Quantum7's been great; it's been really rock solid. Having the extra set of fader banks and the extra meters has been really nice, just to keep an eye on things during the show in case stuff changes," he says. "The show has gotten so big with Alex since August of last year. We added three new band members this year and two additional backline techs; it blew up so fast. But the Quantum7 has handled it super well." Brazinski is another passionate DiGiCo user, having first adopted the brand's consoles in 2017, and has worked with a slew of artists including Kane Brown and Russell Dickerson. He certainly has his hands full in monitor world on Warren's tour, sending 16 dedicated mix outputs to 20 transmitters. "There are six band members-drums, bass, two guitars, keys, and cello, plus two background vocals and Alex-so only 40 band inputs, but when you add all the talkbacks, comms, video, and playback, we're close to 95 or 96 inputs. We have maybe 16 channels free on our Optocore loop. But it's all been working great." Butera says that he is relying heavily on the Quantum338 to provide processing on all of his inputs. "I'm using all the Mustard and Spice Rack in the desk along with eight internal effects that run as backups to external FXs. So I'm definitely leaning on the console." While he does go outside the DiGiCo for processing, he adds, "the foundation of the mix on the input layer is all inside the console." "Mustard stuff has been awesome ever since I started using it," Brazinski says. "I did my first tour with Quantum almost three years ago now, and it totally changed everything for me. I'm very notoriously anti-plug-in, just as another failure point, and another thing that's hard to license and get on flight dates and stuff. So I'm almost all in the box. All of the band inputs have Mustard on them, and I'm using pretty much every feature. I have a minimal amount of outboard -- a vocal chain, a band bus chain, and some reverbs -- but everything else is on the desk. I'm using a lot of Mustard, a lot of Spice Rack, and pretty much all the internal effects as well. I've had really great results and no complaints." With such a large band and associated crew, "We've got 32 channels of talkbacks, including comms, on this tour. That's typically the monitor guy's domain, but it's sometimes too much to manage by myself," says Brazinski, who has programmed the console to enable him to focus on mixing rather than constantly monitor comms traffic. "Alex is a pretty hands-on artist to mix. He's very particular and has a very good ear, so my attention needs to be on him for 100 percent of the show." The setup allows his RF coordinator and monitor tech to listen to a second solo bus mix on a separate cue transmitter. "If there are too many talkbacks or comms going on, I have a GPI footswitch that mutes the talkbacks to me, but my tech can still hear what's going on. If there's something relevant, he can inform me." Leveraging the DiGiCo console's OSC capabilities, the backline techs are also able to communicate by triggering macros in the DiGiCo so that they can speak with the musicians or other crew members. "So I can play less switchboard operator and focus more on the mix," Brazinski says. "It's quite a bit of programming -- I've got maybe 150 hours in this file for Alex, most of it just the programming of the macros and getting all the snapshots to work-but once it's done, it just works, and it's awesome." Butera observes that if he or Brazinski ever run into any challenges with their DiGiCo desks, help is just a phone call away. "Honestly, the support is insane, between Chip, Julian, Matt, and the rest of the team," he says. "You can text or call at any time, day or night, and someone answers immediately. Then there's the presence at every major festival, with a DiGiCo person floating around, whether it's just to say hello or to offer support. That speaks volumes to the company's goal of not only servicing the industry with great products, but with great support as well." 
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