Rock in the Rec 2008

SFL take the new Roland M400 Digital Desk to Rock in the Rec

Its nice to go and do a local straight ahead rock n roll festival now and again. SFL threw a Roland M400 digital console and some d&b C7 and B2 at sound engineer Dan Appleby and told him to 'go and get on with it'.

The Gig

June 28th 2008 saw Dan return to provide sound at Rock in the Rec for SFL having first met up with the team at last years (wet!) gig. The promoter had been exposed to pro audio for the first time when we did the 2007 show and they were not prepared to go back!

Rock in the Rec takes place on Arborfield Recreation Ground with beer on tap courtesy of The Swan pub!

The 2008 line up included Mersey Echos, Chaingang, The Pies, Pot Luck, Without Risk, Organised Chaos, Drifting Shadows, Stroke the Toad, Jambusters, The Quotes and Freeway. You know the score? 11 bands in as many hours, no sound checks and crash mix away with 5 minute changeovers.

The Console

Dan took the opportunity of taking out the new Roland M400 mixer and Cat5 based REAC multicore system for the first time. You need a mixer to be very user friendly in such a situation so it was going to be interesting to see how he got on!

Dan Reports:

'I have used the Yamaha LS9 quite a bit on tour with The Race and SFL have a couple of Yamaha M7CLs and PM5D so I have done plenty of digital stuff. I spent half an hour just looking over the Roland M400 console on the day before the gig and I made sure I understood how the REAC multicore plugged up and that was it. I lobed it on the back of the truck that was to become my 'mix tent' and set off in the sunshine (made a change from last year!).'

'The core was a dream to put out, two Cat5 cables from the little drums and a bit of mains was all I needed. It took me 5 minutes to roll it out. The 1608 stage boxes went on top of the amp rack. Each one allows 16 sends and 8 returns so I had 32+16 in total.'

'The M400 is a 48 channel board with two layers of 24 faders, you can have all 48 channels coming from the stage if you want but here I used the last 8 channels for my playback and internal effects returns'

'Mixing from the back of a van is not my favourite way to go but at least I had nothing to plug up in there! All I needed was my IPod into the local inputs on the back of the desk (there are 8 local ins and outs on XLR), everything from and to stage comes on the Cat5 REAC cables.'

'I've got all the compressors, gates and FX I need on the board, its all pretty straight forward to be honest. It all just works! The PA was d&b C7 and C7 Sub with a bit of extra B2 sub in infra mode for that festival 'trouser shake' vibe. d&b systems are very clean and with the Roland desk sounded just fine! I had stacks of headroom to spare in all departments and good sounds just fell out of every channel.'

'This is a really fast console to get around. I would say it's more like working on a Yamaha M7CL rather than an LS9 which can be a bit 'clunky' when you are in a hurry. The resolution of the screen is fantastic and you get loads of info presented at a glance. You can see all the EQ and compression gain reduction really easily.'

'I had a great day. The bands were all great and all the changeovers worked like clockwork. The Roland console is a great bit of kit and I look forward to using it again.'