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(Left) Norman Swisher, Head Audio Tech at
the Borgata in Atlantic City, with Shannon Austin. |
POTTERS BAR, United
Kingdom — America’s musical first family The Jacksons has reunited for the 2012
Unity Tour, the Jacksons’ first concert tour of the US in almost 30 years. The
Jacksons Unity Tour brings together Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon Jackson
to celebrate the remarkable musical heritage of the Jackson 5 and to honor the
spirit of Michael Jackson. The Unity Tour features the brothers performing
beloved hits like “I Want You Back,” “I’ll Be There,” “Wanna Be Startin’
Somethin’,” “The Love You Save” and many others, with plans for a live concert
album and DVD to follow.
Veteran tour sound
pro Shannon Austin is handling front of house duties for the Unity Tour and
chose a HARMAN Soundcraft Vi6 digital live sound console after an auditioning
process that wasn’t exactly as easy as ABC. “At first, another manufacturer’s
console I won’t name was being forced on me, and I didn’t like it,” said
Austin. “For a historic tour of this magnitude, I didn’t want to settle or
compromise. After all, you’re talking about a group and individuals who have
sold hundreds of millions of records whose songs are part of the very fabric of
American pop music. I had also tried other brands of consoles and none of them
impressed me as much as the Soundcraft Vi6.”
“I’d already used the
Vi6 with two other clients, Jay Sean and Martha Munizzi, and the thing that
jumped out at me the most was the sound quality,” Austin noted. “In both cases,
the desk performed beyond my expectations. I called Tom Der at Soundcraft, told
him I wanted a Vi6 for this tour and he was able to make it happen.”
“I’m using the Vi6 in
a standard configuration for the tour—64 inputs and 32 outputs on the stage
rack,” Austin continued. “The local rack is also pretty straightforward and
adds 16 more line inputs in addition to AES and MADI connections.”
One of the many
aspects Austin likes about the Vi6 is its configurability. “You can customize
it to be the way you want it with the Vistonics™ II touchscreen interface and
the user options on the input section,” he said. “It’s like designing your own
configuration based on your workflow. Compared to other digital desks, the
Vistonics screens make setting up the console a breeze, as well as making any
needed tweaks during a performance.”
“Also—and this is
something that more and more people are paying attention to—the Vi6 has a
really good internal word clock,” Austin added. “The quality of a word clock is
absolutely essential to a piece of digital equipment’s sound quality, and the
depth and width of the sonic image you can achieve.”
“Another big part of
the reason the Vi6 sounds so good is that it has Studer ‘guts’ inside,” Austin
concluded. “I’ve worked with Studer equipment as well as Soundcraft in the past
and the fact that the two companies share technologies is a big plus in my
book. If you were to ask me what three things set the Soundcraft Vi6 apart from
other consoles, I would answer: Sound quality! Sound quality! Sound quality!”
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