Midas Heritage 3000 and Venice 320 accompany Diana Krall on world tour

Photo: courtesy of Midas Consoles.

Audio Product Stories Published: 14 April 2005
Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling, Canadian jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall is currently touring prestigious venues around the world, including a run of five dates at the Royal Albert Hall in London, in support of her latest release “The Girl in the Other Room”. Krall is appearing with a world-class combo comprised of former Weather Report drummer Peter Erskine, bassist Robert Hurst and guitarist Anthony Wilson. The extensive tour will visit legions of fans across the globe who have made Krall the best-selling jazz vocalist in history. A Heritage 3000 at FOH and a Midas Venice 320 for monitors (monitor engineer Eric LaLiberte) will help to ensure that Krall's legendary vocal talents are delivered with warmth and clarity to her demanding audiences.

Dave Lawler of Docktrdave Audio, Inc. in Capistrano Beach, CA, was contracted to mix sound at FOH for the tour. He brought in his 48-channel Heritage 3000 console to ensure the acoustic nuances of the band would remain intact, relying on the most trusted mic preamps and EQs in the industry. Though onstage electronics are minimal, with boutique amps, custom instruments and German microphones being par for the course, Lawler’s FOH setup belies the simplicity of the DSP-free backline, incorporating no less than three BSS Soundwebs and 24 zones of audio through his line arrays and fills. The natural characteristics of Krall’s voice and her band’s virtuoso instrumentation reach the Heritage relatively unfettered by processing, providing signals which Dave then places precisely around the room, immersing the audience in mood and rhythm.

Dave commented: “The Heritage is a remarkable console because it is so flexible – it obviously works great as a monitor console on big rock tours, but is also ideal at FOH in this application. When quality sound is built into a console, especially in terms of the warm preamps, it allows an engineer to start a new project with a distinct advantage. In this case, the combination of quality equipment onstage and in the FOH booth freed me up to pay particular attention to the zoning, to really provide the audience with the ultimate live jazz experience. Things sound good with minimal tweaking – the less I put between Diana’s voice and the audience the better. Quite simply, a digital console isn’t going to be as responsive, warm and subtly expressive as the Heritage. The EQs work, and do so without needing to press a bunch of buttons – it’s immediately gratifying to work with faders and hand-crafted pre’s and EQs, and I really think that translates into keeping the human element of the music intact. I’ve been using Midas consoles for a long, long time now, and I have a large inventory of Midas equipment, all of which works hard and works consistently. This is a high profile tour – Diana is scheduled to play five nights straight at the Royal Albert Hall in London – and there’s nothing else out there that I’d bring out on a tour like this that’s as reliable, easy to use and sonically satisfying as a big Midas console.”

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