One of the largest jazz festivals in Asia, Jazz Music Festival Shanghai (上海爵士音乐节) is the biggest outdoor music event in China’s largest city, and attracts artists from across the world.

Now in its seventh year, the festival featured five stages, including a DiGiCo SD8 and SD8-24 on one. The rigours of being in use for more than ten hours each day and jazz fans demanding the best audio quality meant that the desks were well chosen for their FOH and monitor duties at the Riverside Stage.

‘The festival provides a chance for jazz musicians and audio engineers to get together and enjoy the music,’ says Monica Au, Marketing & Communications Executive at Hong Kong-based Rightway Audio Consultants, who provided the festival’s audio equipment. ‘They have very high standards, so we will only use the very best systems bringing the truest, clearest sound to the critical ears of jazz audiences, musicians and the professional engineers.

‘The entire DiGiCo SD Series features the same creative mixing power, versatility and exceptional sonic purity and we decided the SD8 and SD8-24 were the best choice for the Riverside Stage, she adds. ‘The intuitive user interface and Stealth Digital Processing also means that they are ideally suited for festivals.’

Rightway’s product manager Shaojun Liang and technical engineer Jimmy Zhan were present to assist the stage’s audio engineers TL Pettersen and Dan Mosley. It was Pettersen’s first experience of using a DiGiCo console and one which he enjoyed.

‘The team from Rightway helped to make my first DiGiCo experience a very positive one,’ he says. ‘Together with the fabulous K-array loudspeaker system, it was a very free and creative sound experience. I look forward to my next encounter with a DiGiCo console.’

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