Taking them from Osaka and Seoul to Las Vegas and New York City, the Japanese-born/South Korea-based girl group XG have chosen DiGiCo’s Quantum338 mixing console to accompany them. The first Howl tour saw the band’s seven vocalists fill every seat in the arenas and theatres they’ve played across Asia and North America. Now, XG has moved on to the UK and Europe.
FOH engineer German Tarazona has been a fan of the Quantum338 since taking it out on the road with Colombian music star and Grammy Award-winner Maluma on his Don Juan world tour in 2023, where he found that the Quantum’s Mustard and Spice Rack processing streamlined his workflow, both operationally and sonically. Coming after the Covid lockdowns, the Quantum338 made touring seem like a new experience…
‘It was a huge surprise for me how the screens, the flexibility of the banks’ faders, and the DMI cards improved the workflow, and of course the sound was amazing as well,’ he says.
That has extended to this tour with XG, where Tarazona is managing 47 input channels for the group’s seven vocalists on what has been a tracks-only tour.
‘On this tour, monitor engineer Eishi Miura and I decided to split the two 56×40, 32-bit SD-Racks we’re touring with, and the tracks are running analogue through an analogue splitter. DiGiCo’s Quantum338 has made integration between digital and analogue seamless,’ says Tarazona, who notes that he and Miura are working with RF technician Taka Nakai and system tech Darin Herschberger.
XG is a colorful band, musically and visually, and monitor engineer Miura notes that that extends to his DiGiCo Quantum338 console: ‘The three screens are bright and easy to manage,’ he says. ‘And. yes, colourful.’
Miura, who mixes band members Jurin, Chisa, Hinata, Juria, Cocona, Maya, and Harvey all on IEMs onstage, is a fan of the Quantum’s Mustard Processing, including its Optical Compressor. So much so, he adds, that he’s planning to switch from some external processing to fully onboard processing in the near future. But his prime compliment is for the desk’s sound and workflow, which he says is shared by the group.
‘I think the sound quality is excellent, and the artists feel the same way,’ he says. ‘I can respond immediately and flexibly to any mix requests from artists, as we move from venue to venue, to keep it consistent for them onstage. It’s really a pleasure to use.’
Tarazona is applying Spice Rack liberally to the backing tracks, using its multiband compressors on beats, harmonies, keyboards, and guitars. ‘Spice Rack is controlling the dynamics of the tracks for the whole show,’ he says. ‘I have more than 55 snapshots during the show, so Spice Rack processing has become a really important tool for me on this tour.’
Similarly, Mustard processing also plays a key role on the tour: ‘For the lead vocals, I have eight headsets and eight handhelds – seven main singers and one spare – so I use Mustard for all the voices, using two different EQs.’
There’s no band, but that doesn’t mean there’s no complexity onstage. Tarazona notes that XG uses two different click tracks – a robot click and the slate count for different moments in each song.
‘It’s more like a musical theatre show than a concert because I have so many inputs constantly coming in and out as each song progresses, because the girls’ voices are coming in and out at different points in the song and I don’t want all the microphones open all the time,’ he explains. ‘On a couple of songs, I have more than ten snapshots – on just one song. The Quantum’s features really make that manageable.’
The first Howl is a true world tour, touching three continents so far. And it’s also the tour on which Tarazona discovered that DiGiCo’s support is as global as the music itself. ‘They have been fantastic,’ he says. ‘I’ve been really happy to find that DiGiCo’s huge support comes with us globally, because this tour has been all around Asia, the US, and now Europe. I’m looking forward to knowing that that support will be there everywhere we go.’
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