As Kasabian embarks on the 2015 summer festival season – with two warm up
shows at Utrecht’s TivoliVredenburg and Groningen’s De Oosterpoort in The
Netherlands, at Belgium’s massive Rock Werchter festival and then headlining
multiple festivals across Europe – Front of House engineer Paul Ramsay and monitor
engineer Wayne “Rabbit’ Sargeant explain why DiGiCo’s SD7 is their console of
choice.

“We’re not taking any PA on this run, just FOH control and monitor system,’
explains Ramsay Ramsay, who has been working with the English rock band since
the end of 2011. “But due to distances between some of the shows we’re carrying
two separate, but identical, systems (A and B), so we can physically get the
equipment to all the shows.’

Ramsay’s SD7 system is equipped with two Waves extreme servers running Waves
plugins. “I have a Lake LM44 for system EQ with a wireless tablet and Waves BCL
hardware unit over the master buss,’ he says. “Other than this I’m using no
external outboard. I use the internal SD Gates, Compressors, Effects and Waves
plugins as required.’

Ramsay uses one full SD Rack of inputs, with 56 channels from stage, around 10
stereo effects engines and a few playback stems, giving approximately 90 inputs in
total. For outputs he takes AES feeds into his Lake LM44 for PA inputs, but also has
some stems for sub mixes for the broadcast truck.

Ramsay carries out a virtual sound check every day using a DiGiGrid MGB, both
with near fields, to tidy up Snapshots, work on songs and in the PA itself in the
morning as the band are not able to do sound checks at any of the festivals.

At monitors Sargeant is new boy to the Kasabian fold, having started working with
them at the beginning of this year.

“As a monitor engineer I need to get around things quickly and confidently and,
ideally, not take my eyes off the band. I feel that I can do that with the SD7
because I can custom build any of my fader banks, inputs and outputs – in fact,
everything.’

Like Ramsay, Sargeant’s outboard rig is almost non-existent. “Everything is on the
SD7,’ he says. “It’s got great EQ and Multiband Compression and that’s really all I
need for monitors. I don’t need any outboard other than a TC D2 and that’s simply
because [guitarist and vocalist] Sergio [Pizzomo] particularly likes it.

“To give myself a fighting chance, I run virtual soundcheck to tune and balance the
festival sidefills – as Ramsay said, we don’t have any rehearsals. I’m also using an
iPad running the DiGiCo SD App to EQ whilst away from the desk.

Sargeant’s set up is, he says, “a simple system that is compact and bijou. I try to fit
everything under the desk, then I have the SD Rack as well. I have a total of 56
inputs and 32 outputs as a general rule, but for a lot of the headline shows we also
have a four-piece string section, which will add to that. I could have had a smaller
console, but I have dual redundancy backup here. It’s all about not messing up
really, isn’t it.’