Nashville, TN (October 4, 2016)—Indie artist Ben Rector has sold more than 450,000 albums and four million singles over the last 10 years, and much of that success has been powered by heavy touring. Supported on the road by Spectrum Sound, the artist’s latest tour is carrying a pair of DiGiCo SD9 digital consoles, used by Jake Hartsfield, FOH engineer/production manager, and Brian Boggs, monitor engineer.
“I’d read a lot about the DiGiCo consoles and many of the live mixes I’ve admired were mixed with them,” says Hartsfield. “Spectrum Sound had SD9s available that were fully upgraded with the new Stealth Core 2 software and the Optocore fiber-optic loop that lets both consoles share the same SD Rack amp heads.”
He’s also found that the SD9 has virtually all of the EQ and dynamics processing onboard that he needs for live shows. “I put a bit of the Waves C6 multiband compressor plug-in on Ben’s voice for some polish,” he says. “But everything else I need is right there on the console.”
“With the new Stealth Core 2 upgrade, I can have 96 channels,” he says. “When we began rehearsals, we were right at 48 channels, so I have plenty of room for additional channels if I need them. I’m also very comfortable with the number of faders and work surface.”
Hartsfield connects the SD9’s I/O through MADI via the DiGiGrid MGB to a multitrack recorder, enabling him to record every show (Rector’s 2014 LP release was a live record), and playback from that routed back into both consoles via MADI enables him to do virtual monitor soundchecks at FOH and monitors.
Ben Rector
www.benrectormusic.com
Spectrum Sound
www.spectrumsound.com
DiGiCo
www.DiGiCo.biz
