Taking in 11 dates in venues ranging from arenas to academies, James’ recent UK tour was also recorded by System Engineer Mark O’Neill from AudioPlus using a Roland R-1000 48-track audio recorder/player.

‘We weren’t initially looking for a recording solution but, after looking at the R-1000, the band liked the idea of multitrack recording and being able to use the playback for reference,’ says O’Neill. We had been impressed with the sound quality of the RSG consoles that we use for our smaller DJ events, so we decided to give it a go and were happy with the end results.’

To make the recordings, the inputs from a DiGiCo SD8 desk were fed into a Roland S-Madi REAC Bridge toconvert them from Madi to REAC for the R-1000. The S-Madi REAC Bridge is a bi-directional signal converter between REAC and Madi, enabling connectivity between Madi-equipped digital audio mixers/systems to any REAC based devices. A Roland S-4000 chassis was loaded with SO-DA4 output cards and used as an output device from the R-1000 via REAC to break the signal into analogue lines to feed into the Midas XL-4 desk also in use.

Designed to work in live events and production, the R-1000 can provide virtual rehearsals and playback, as well as recording for video shoots. It can be used with any digital console with over Madi via the S-Madi REAC Madi Bridge. Based on REAC (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication), the R-1000 replaces an analogue snake with Cat5e/6 (Ethernet/LAN) cable. Recording up to 48 tracks of 24-bit audio in BWF format, its removable hard drive allows approximately 20 hours of recording (44.1/48kHz) using a 500Gb HDD. Multitrack playback (48 tracks of 24-bit audio via REAC) is also provided, and a marker function enables playback at any designated point.