DiGiCo SD8 Stars At The Friendliest Festival On The Planet

Billed as 'the friendliest festival on the planet', Sauti za Busara is the highlight of the annual music calendar in Tanzania. The East African event takes place over five days in February and this year attracted 400 musicians from across the continent. With a dedicated DiGiCo SD8 console at the front-of-house position, an eclectic range of music was enjoyed by a rapturous audience.

The festival takes place on the island of Zanzibar, with the main stage at the historic Old Fort in Stone Town. Four consecutive nights of non-stop, eight-hour live performances meant that using a digital console made a lot of sense. Purchased for last year's festival, the Digico SD8 and MadiRack had been stored in a container for a year, but had coped very well with the tropical climate and monsoon rains.

"After been cleaned and tested at the end of last year's festival, the console and MadiRack were kept in their flight-cases inside a large storage container, along with other PA equipment," says front-of-house engineer Gurjit Dhinsa.

"When we got them out for this year's festival, all the hardware was in a stable condition, the touch screen was fine, and there were no issues with the MadiRack. The only issue we had was that the console's faders weren't sliding smoothly. But a chat with Robert Andrews from Digico's technical support team determined it was simply down to the lack of use. Sure enough, after we ran through some diagnostic tests they stabilized and worked perfectly."

Using a console that had the facilities to handle a wide array of inputs, and quickly change over between them, meant that Gurjit and visiting sound engineers were able to keep up with the festival's relentless schedule. "On any given day, the festival may start with a Taarab orchestra and move on to a band consisting of drums, bass, guitars, keys, various acoustic instruments and vocals. After that there may be a percussion group, then a singer/guitarist and so on," he says.

"The setups vary anywhere from eight up to 40 channels. The SD8 was the festival's only front-of-house board, so it had to deal with changeovers in-between all the performances while, (at the same time), the MC microphones, CD playback, local record and audio feeds for video cameras and external spaces were kept running."

To ensure that changeovers were as fast and reliable as possible, Gurjit and his team created snapshots for various ensemble types at the start of the festival and used them as a basis for quick input assignment as the event progressed. Certain inputs, outputs, master / matrix parameters and sends also needed to be recall-safe, so as not to be affected by snapshot changes from act to act.

"We kept labelling to a minimum and were able to create an individual mix quickly," Gurjit continues. "We could recall a snapshot for the next artist with all the input, dynamics, EQ and effects parameters intact from the sound check while the MCs introduced them. This was truly appreciated by incoming engineers, who found it quick and easy to familiarize themselves with the console and use their own external effects and dynamics with the console's local inputs and outputs if they chose."

"Without the SD8's snapshot program and recall ability we would have been running well behind the festival's tight schedule everyday. It played a major role in making the event such a success."