With Ed Sheeran on its roster of leading artists, UK-based production company Major Tom Ltd is constantly evolving its digital audio systems. Although not lengthy, Sheeran’s recent UK tour sold 400,000 tickets for two weekend appearances at London’s Wembley Stadium and Dublin’s Croke Park.

Key to their success were Major Tom’s use of a Meyer Sound PA, DiGiCo mixing desks, Sennheiser wireless monitors and mics, and a newly acquired Optocore network. In particular, Sennheiser’s Digital 9000 Series microphones have ‘revolutionised Ed’s sound’, according to FOH and monitor engineer Chris Marsh.

Marsh moved to the Digital 9000 system during Ed’s last US tour, using it for vocal, looped vocal and guitar. ‘Digital 9000 Series has changed our lives,’ he confirms. ‘We had been looking at ways of moving Ed’s guitar away from being wired, but we hadn’t found a good enough wireless system for him to lose the cable, which he’d been using since the very beginning. That was until we tried Digital 9000 – unlike others we tried, we found it sounded even better than the cable.

‘From an audio point of view, his vocal became a lot more prominent and his guitar sounded more natural. On top of that we’ve been doing stadiums, so having something that has such strong RF capability made a real difference. It meant that Ed could be up to 50m away from the receivers and still have rock-solid reception. It’s made a really big difference to the show and to Ed’s ability to move around the stage.’

Marsh has been a DiGiCo advocate for many years, but the SD7, used in conjunction with an SD-Mini Rack on stage, is now his preferred set-up. ‘The DiGiCo SD7 has been my companion for the last 18 months and I wouldn’t change it for anything,’ he says.

‘The preamps are incredibly natural, they really sound musical,’ he says. ‘There’s so much you can do with Dynamic EQ and Compression; the need for additional outboard is negated by the power within the console itself. As long as I have my SD7, I have everything I need. The SD-Mini Rack sits on the stage end. The cool thing about that is that I can have a small amount of I/O within the rack.’

‘People used to laugh at me when I mixed Ed on an SD11,’ Marsh smiles. ‘They said it wasn’t possible to do it on something so small, but of course it was. Now, they’re laughing at me because I’ve got the most powerful console available for one man and a guitar.’

Despite the fact that there are few inputs (13 in total from Sheeran), most are duplicated several times over within the songs. ‘I do all the monitoring from within the SD7 from FOH, as well as all media feeds and the audio feeds to video world, which are mainly for tempo related stuff,’ Marsh explains. ‘We also have a lot of effects for looping that get fed into the looper to go back out to Ed. So there may be only 13 inputs, but there are also 42 output buses and 39 input-related buses.’

Mixing roles 

Handling FOH and monitors from the same desk may appear to be a cost-saving exercise, but the reasoning behind it lies elsewhere: ‘Ed had a monitor engineer a while ago, but it didn’t really work for him,’ says Marsh, ‘He wanted to have everything that came out of the console to be consistent. He’s all about consistency because of the way he builds his loops – he needs to know that no one is effecting or changing the sound. If a monitor engineer is changing something, then Ed will change the way he’s playing and that could significantly alter the way things sound for the audience. Even if it’s not sounding exactly as he’d want it to at the start, he’d rather stick with that than change it part way through a set.’

To aid this, Marsh has changed the way he handles delays. ‘Ed and I can play off each other in terms of FOH and monitors, and that’s something that can only be derived from FOH. It’s working really well,’ he says.

The Sheeran set-up demonstrates Major Tom’s ability to identify solutions and retain them, while remaining vigilant over new developments and technologies.

‘We have been massive DiGiCo users since they started out, and as such have always used the Optocore products within the DiGiCo set-up,’ says Major Tom’s Andy Banks. Recently the company purchased its own system of multiple Optocore X6R and V3R converters with mic in, line out and AES boards. ‘We knew it would make FOH runs smaller and lighter and give greater efficiencies, with the requirement for far greater channel capacity over far less cable,’ he explains.

The purchase, which gives Major Tom separate V3R and X6R stand-alone systems, can be deployed as conventional returns racks while giving the option to combine them for larger delay rings as the site demands.

Although the system debuted on a UFC Fight Night, Banks confirms that the Optocore system was purchased with Sheeran’s recent stadium dates in mind, where it was used to distribute audio from Meyer Sound Galileo Callisto 616 loudspeaker processors. ‘With UFC being an in-the-round event, we could simply have two tiny fibres running from the venue roof grid and take all audio, with minimum impact on sightlines,’ Banks says. ‘On the other hand, the Wembley shows with Ed Sheeran were a major challenge, especially as we were using a system design that had never been tried in the venue before. However, it was a massive success, offering improved coverage for the upper seats. This wouldn’t have been possible without the longer cable runs we can now use over a fibre network, and it made set up and control of the system really simple.

‘It means that in stadiums we can easily run one small optical cable to our delay positions hundreds of meters away with no signal loss and have data control to all of those positions over the same single cable. The Optocore system is not only lighter and more compact to run but the fact that it is scalable to each job is also a massive benefit.’

Banks reports that the Optocore system was also given a thumbs-up by Sheeran’s technical team: ‘The system worked faultlessly and with transparent audio quality,’ he says. ‘Head of audio, Charlie Albin, system engineers, Dave White and Malcolm Giles, FOH engineer and production manager, Chris Marsh, all really appreciated the ability to run such long cable runs without having to worry about signal loss or cable paths. In any case, they already run their whole stage on an Optocore loop with the DiGiCo SD racks for all input and outputs as well.

Banks sees opportunities for deployment of the Optocore system – not only on Major Tom’s regular UFC events, but also with other regular acts, including Judas Priest, who will be touring in coming months, and other projects that are still under wraps.

‘We use a great combination of equipment, all serviced by Major Tom,’ Marsh offers. It has all travelled the world, standing up to several metres of snow and the baking sun of Dubai with equal success. ‘We’ve been travelling around the world with it for the past 18 months and it has stood up to everything we’ve thrown at it, performing faultlessly throughout.’

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