Las Vegas, NV (December 13, 2018)— Firehouse Productions fielded four DiGiCo consoles when Univision broadcast the 19th Annual Latin Grammy Awards Show live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas last month
Firehouse Productions supplied two SD7 desks for front-of-house music and production, and two SD10 consoles for monitors, along with a total of eight SD-Racks for the production. The company’s VP Mark Dittmar and system technician David Crawford designed the event’s sound system, with Luis Espinal also serving as a system tech. Front-of-house music mixer Ron Reaves and production mixer Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher both used SD7 consoles, while monitor mixers Mike Parker and Mike Bove used the SD10 desks.
“The DiGiCo consoles are a very powerful platform to work from on shows like this, where the engineers are potentially confronted with complex workflows,” explains Dittmar, who also assigns DiGiCo desks for Firehouse Productions’ support of the Grammy Awards and the Video Music Awards shows, among other broadcast events. “The SD consoles have so many features that make workflows simpler and let the engineers focus on the sound.
“For instance, we used the remote iPad feature on the SD10s at monitors, which really let the engineers focus on what each artist on stage needed and let them and their teams get things like in-ears set up properly and quickly. The SD consoles also let you work in the domains you want: we traditionally do analog splits between consoles, and each desk has its own set of SD-Racks, and there’s never an issue there. They’re just rock-solid no matter how you use them.”
Production Mixer Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher used an SD7 to bring 56 inputs of introductions, acceptance speeches, stage patter and music bumpers into the house. These came everywhere from the four podiums on stage (two wireless and two pop-ups, the last a backup podium) for the event hosts Carlos Rivera and Ana de la Reguera, four handheld microphones, and a full music backup of Reaves’ console.
“That’s one more thing that you always want DiGiCo for—the redundancy,” says Fletcher. “The SD7 has two complete engines, and I know that if there’s ever a problem, it will be a seamless transition from one to another. It lets you focus all your attention on the show, which is where it should be.”
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