ESS”S Phil McDaniel picture with M7CL on tour with Razorlight
With an ever-increasing workload, Mansfield-based Entertainment Sound Specialists (ESS) is now one of the UK’s major concert sound providers.
Festivals and one-off shows form a significant part of the company’s workload, which often include considerable time pressures and the need to provide a high quality technical infrastructure on a fairly tight budget.
With this in mind, 2007 was the year that ESS decided to bite the bullet and embrace all the advantages that digital audio offers.
Yet, although it was a very significant move for this previously all-analogue company, the benefits of digital were so quickly embraced that digital has already become ESS’s standard format, with analogue offered as an option.
“When we decided to buy digital consoles we had three key criteria, all of which had to be fulfilled,” says the company’s Phil McDaniel. “These were the reason that we have initially chosen two Yamaha PM5Ds and two M7CLs.”
“Firstly the desks had to be what we regarded as ‘industry standard’, i.e. widely used and known. Yamaha digital consoles have been around for 20 years and the company has vast experience of the digital format. There are many Yamaha digital desks out there, so from that Yamaha was an obvious choice.
“Secondly,” he says. “They had to be reliable and flexible. Of course we couldn’t risk them being unstable during a show, despite the fact that they were to be used pretty intensively. I have seen both the PM 5D and M7CL used and abused in all conditions, with no problems. And when I‘ve used them myself they have been extremely reliable. They also are very versatile.”
“Finally,” he says. “They had to be acceptable to the majority of potential users. Because we do a lot of one-off shows, we couldn’t have engineers turning up saying ‘We’re not gonna use that’. We often get lists of preferred consoles and, across the board, these were the most acceptable. If they weren’t first, they were second or third on almost all the lists. There are so many in use across the industry that most engineers will have used one.
“All of these factors made the PM5D and M7CL the logical choices, especially with Yamaha’s excellent technical backup.”
Once the consoles were delivered, a brief but intensive period of familiarisation followed as, within a week, the consoles were in use on the Carling Stage at both Leeds and Reading sites of the Carling Weekend festival.
“We had very little time to establish standard procedures, especially the culture of saving and loading console files, but we held a number of intensive internal workshops which went very well,” says Phil. “And the performance of the consoles at the festival was excellent.”
Being able to save, load and email show files for the consoles is a major advantage at a festival like the Carling Weekend, with identical stages in two locations, bands playing at one site on one day and at another the next.
“Some of the band engineers sent us their show files ahead of the weekend,” says Phil. “This gave us a good starting point and, with our engineers loading the show files to the consoles in the very tight turnarounds between bands, often resulted in guest engineers effectively gaining 5-10 minutes of prep time. Considering the turnaround times were often as little as 15 minutes, this was a major advantage.
“Of course the engineers would tweak the settings, but at the end of the set it was saved and our guys would then email the show file to the other site, where the band would be playing the following day, and significant time would be saved there. This also happened when we created a mix from scratch.”
This would seem to be a common sense approach for similar festivals with multiple sites, such as V, which would be more cumbersome with analogue. And it certainly helped to endear ESS to the Carling Weekend’s stage managers.
“The stage managers were especially pleased that we managed to move things along a little. We had absolutely no negative feedback and a number of very positive emails,” says Phil. “It’s an approach that we’re very much looking to the future with.”
Since then the consoles have been hard at work on a wide range of shows, including Chris Cornell, Tony Hadley, Go West / ABC, The Twang, Jack Penate, The Cribs, Pitchshifter and many more.
Furthermore Phil sees both console models as affordable since the value for money ratio is high. In other words, digital consoles like the M7CL will only increase the quality of service to smaller gigs which would not normally be able to afford all the features which come as standard on that console..
“These days most shows are ‘budget sensitive’ and headline bands occasionally have certain audio demands,” says Phil. “As a result, with the analogue solution, we often have to either put more gear on a show than we’ve been paid for, or the support band has to miss out.
“But now promoters and venues know we have the Yamaha consoles, that’s not an issue for any size of venue. The footprint of the console is smaller, meaning that less space is taken up both at FOH and at the monitor position, and all artists benefit with the recall functions, etc. They don’t have to compromise at all any more.
“The filtering down effect from big consoles is now in full flow. Smaller venues can now have very high specification desks and all bands can put on much better shows sound-wise than would normally be possible with analogue. From all those perspectives, digital consoles are better.”
But with those advantages comes a need for audio engineers still committed to the analogue domain to learn all that benefits that digital brings, and how to make the most of them.
“Because everything they need is there, engineers who are yet to embrace digital can’t simply blame the equipment any more,” smiles Phil. “What’s needed now is for as much information and knowledge as possible to be filtered down to the small rental companies and operators, to demonstrate that there are so many advantages of digital.
“At ESS, we now consider digital to be our standard format and we offer analogue as an option. That’s how much the industry is changing, it’s effectively being turned on its head. If the consoles are here and we’re not up to our ears prepping a show, anyone is welcome to come in and be shown over them at any time. We’re more than happy to do what we can to spread the word!”
