DiGiCo SD8 Rocks KROQ’s Stage at 2011 Coachella Mega Fest
Story Highlights
For the second consecutive year, Los Angeles, CA’s rock radio station, KROQ, rented a house, mere steps from the main stage at Coachella Music and Arts Festival in April. Over the course of the 3-day fest, the KROQ Coachella House stage played host to live mini-sets and interviews with four to five bands daily ranging from Arcade Fire, The Black Keys and Cage The Elephant, to Interpol, Flogging Molly and Mumford & Sons. In the midst of the California desert, the Broadcast Support-supplied DiGiCo SD8 handled FOH, Monitor and the station’s On-Air Broadcast for approximately several hundred thousand listening fans, as well as distinct mixes for the Webcast and backup recordings.
Broadcast Support’s founder and President, Scott Ramsay, has worked with KROQ for over three decades, and provided services for the station’s inaugural Coachella House at last year’s festival. He specified the SD8 for the gig for many reasons, one of which was to have an easy-to-operate system on-hand for touring engineers.
“I was familiar with the SD8’s reputation, but hadn’t actually had a hands-on experience with the console. I knew that DiGiCo made extremely intuitive and simply great-sounding consoles, and with the SD8’s massive onboard digital processing and control available in an easy-to-operate package was the deciding factor for me,” he says. “The onboard package is phenomenal, and I get everything I want and more. I laugh every time I walk by my wall of now-retired outboard processors.”