Counting Maroon 5, Annie Lennox, Sting and Prince among his touring credits, FOH engineer Jim Ebdon is currently on a world tour with Sam Smith following the release of Smith’s new The Thrill of It All album. Accompany him is a Solid State Logic L200 mixing console, supplied by Capital Sound, London.

‘A lot of the new album was recorded onto 16-track analogue, and then moved onto Pro Tools.’ says Ebdon. ‘I love the feel of the album, and I love the sound of it, and I wanted to recreate that. So the SSL was a no-brainer. It sounds like an analogue console, and it has a Save button…’

The show itself has unusual staging, with the main stage projecting quite a way out into the auditorium, and PA system set up ‘in-the-round’ rather than as a traditional LR system. Ebdon’s FOH mix position is to one side of the stage, facing a single line of D&B speakers, and has to pay particular attention to tonal balance, because of limitations on bass cab placement.

‘We did four weeks of band rehearsals for this show, so I had time to fine tune mixes and hone instrument sounds. I was using the L200 as a recording console for some of it, so I could record mixes and play them back to the band.

‘Once we got to our first arena for production rehearsals, those mixes translated really well onto the big sound system; I was really pleased with the sound quality and the way it all worked out.’