Furthering our established relationship with repeat Client Production Network Worldwide Services, Sound By Design once again provided sound services for this years sell-out ‘Islamic Relief’ Tour; An Evening Of Inspiration, taking the show in to Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham and London to an estimated total live audience of 13,000 people.

In a fundraising evening of mixed entertainment, the four hour show included comedian Mo Amer, band performances from Hamza Robertson, Imad Rami, Zain Bhika, Dawud Wharnsby Ali and the commercial rap band Outlandish. The London show at The Royal Albert Hall was recorded for DVD with Sound By Design hired to provide a 56-track HD audio recording of the event, in addition to the touring sound reinforcement. This year the Royal Albert Hall show was also broadcast on live TV across the world via the SKY network, with Sound By Design providing the audio mix to TV.

Senior Engineer Griff Hewis chose to tour a trusted Midas Heritage 2000 as his front-of-house desk, with outboard processing and effects from Drawmer, BSS, Klark Teknik, TC Electronic, Lexicon and Yamaha. For system duties Griff chose to take a ground-stacked system of Meyer Sound CQ-1’s with 650-P subs configured in a cardoid array. In addition, he flew an array of Meyer UPA-1Ps to cover the upper galleries in smaller venues and mid-sized Meyer M2D curvilinear arrays for larger shows. Front-fill was a mix of Meyer UPM-1Ps and Meyer UPJ-1Ps and all system management was looked after with BSS Omnidrive Compact Plus’.

For monitors, Senior Engineer John Gale mixed the show on his usual choice of a DiGiCo D1 Live. Four sets of Shure PSM700 with E5 drivers and sixteen EM Acoustics M-12S wedges with QSC PL236 amplifiers made up the core rig, with Meyer CQ-1s as side-fill. The benefit of the digital D1 desk was that John could save each band’s sound check and recall the exact monitor mix in an instant mid-show, whilst reducing stage space required for a monitor position due to the board’s small footprint and onboard processing.

John also took advantage of the DiGiCo D1’s MADI capabilities for the DVD recording to hard disk, using a Pink Pig Madicorder for a main 56-track recording and a MADI equipped SADIE to take a back-up, all synced to SMPTE time-code from the outside broadcast. As per last years DVD, John will provide a Dolby 5.1 mix-down of the show in Protools HD for a release on DVD later in the year.