Peter Gabriel recently completed his first live tour in six years, taking in Europe and North America in support of his latest album, i/o, which is his first release of original studio material since 2002. Both legs of the tour carried three Solid State Logic Live mixing consoles – an L550 Plus at FOH, a further L550 Plus for band monitors and an L650 for Gabriel’s monitors – plus a compact SSL SiX to mix Gabriel’s keyboards.

‘I was the first person to use the SSL Live desk on his tour,’ says veteran monitor engineer Dee Miller, who has been working with Gabriel since the end of the Growing Up Tour in 2003. ‘It’s the only desk I use now.’

Miller marks 40 years on the road in 2024, and spent the past 20 years decades collaborating with Robert Plant. Additionally, he history with Jeff Beck and has worked with artists such as The Who and Diana Ross. On i/o – The Tour he typically created 14 stereo IEMs for the nine musicians and crew plus one for musical guests.

Richard Sharratt, who has been Gabriel’s FOH engineer since 2010’s New Blood Tour, used a variety of consoles before SSL Live was introduced, including with other artists and clients for whom he has worked. ‘You’re conscious of the differences when you use a different desk and you come back to SSL,’ he comments. ‘The SSL Live has just got that lovely warmth, that analogue thing. It sounds open and clear and just generally better, and we have more room for everything in the mix.

‘The internal effects are really good on the SSL,’ he continues. ‘Peter’s vocals are a challenge because they are just so dynamic and because of his style of singing. I use the de-esser and multiband comp, a fair amount of inserted 10-band EQ and also more EQ to just tweak his mic to get more gain before feedback. But none of the compressors are working too hard.’

The tour’s production set-up included 128 channels of Madi recording: ‘Peter insists on recording soundcheck at shows whenever he’s on stage,’ Sharratt says.

Those recordings are a core part of Gabriel’s long-time creative workflow, both on the road and in the studio, where he records every musical idea, however fleeting, for potential future compositions, sometimes drawing on archives from many years earlier. For his FOH mixing purposes, Sharratt adds, ‘the band inputs are within the first 96’.

Miller uses the SSL Live’s internal processing and scenes in preference to any outboard equipment: ‘I never use any outboard,’ he confirms. ‘Everything internal is fine for me, and I love everything on it. I love the reverbs. I only use a couple of small reverbs for a couple of members of the band, so I don’t need anything outboard. Plus, you’ve got SSL compressors on there. What else do you need? It’s the industry standard in the studio.’

Unlike at FOH, the monitor mix is specific to each musician. ‘They tell you what they need,’ Miller says. ‘All I have to care about is how the desk sounds. The SSL Live is so clean. There’s room for everything in the mix. This desk, to me, is the benchmark.’

This latest tour was bittersweet for Miller after four decades on the road, half of them travelling the world with Peter Gabriel. ‘I’m back with Robert Plant for a couple of weeks in the UK, doing very small shows, then I’m going to do some stuff locally in London, but I’ve run my course,’ he reveals. ‘This was my last big tour – and a lovely way to go out.’

The SSL Live consoles used on i/o – The Tour were supplied by Britannia Row Productions. Peter Gabriel’s i/o album is available now on Real World.