With a career spanning thirty-five years, the greatest Russian Rock legend, Boris Grebenshikov and his band Aquarium returned for one night only at the Royal Albert Hall, with Sound By Design hired to provide both live sound reinforcement and DVD sound production services for the show.

Often referred to as the Bob Dylan of Russia, Boris is a unique singer and songwriter. During the 70s and 80s Aquarium created an entirely unique musical and social aesthetic. Influenced by a variety of music styles and cultures, the group's sound nevertheless remained recognisable, whether performing quiet love ballads, light dancing reggae or powerful rock-n-roll anthems.

With the hall sold at full capacity for the PA side of things, the show was mixed on Sound By Design’s latest revision of their Meyer Sound M2D & M1D curvilinear array design for the hall, accompanied by Meyer 650-P subs and Meyer UPA-1P/ UPJ-1P front-fill. Senior Engineer Griff Hewis looked after the FOH side of things, providing a Midas Heritage 2000 with outboard processing from BSS, Drawmer, Yamaha and Lexicon for the guest engineer with system management controlled by a Meyer Galileo 616.

Monitors were taken care on a Crest Audio X-Monitor with outboard processing from BSS. Wedges were a mix of EM Acoustics M-12Ss and Meyer USM-1P self-powered stage monitors.

In addition to the sound reinforcement Sound By Design were also hired to provide a DVD HD record of the show, made by Senior Engineer John Gale. Two hard disk multi-track recordings were taken, one to a 56 channel “Pink Pig” MADI Recorder and a backup to a Mackie SDR-24. Both were synced to the Outside Broadcast Truck via time-code.

John also made a live mix of the show to the OB truck on a DiGiCo D1 Live and made a two-track backup record of this mix to Pro Tools, monitoring on Meyer HM-1S reference monitors. Working with regular client Production Network Worldwide Services, John will also provide post-production mixing on the DVD for a Dolby 5.1 mix in Pro Tools HD.