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05|09
AMSR
STEPHEN BENNETT finds that
sometimes, the best things in
life really are free. This certainly
holds true for DiGiCo,
that has upped the bhp on
its SD7 ‘engine’ for absolutely
nothing at all.
When DiGiCo released its nautically inspired SD7
console (previewed in Audio Media March 2008), it
was already one of the most innovative and highly
specified live consoles on the market. The company has now
released the MACH2 upgrade, which takes further advantage
of the processing power provided by the Field Programmable
Gate Array (FPGA) Stealth processing and Tiger SHARC chips
in the SD7. “Say that you’ve just bought yourself a standard
Porsche with a 350bhp engine, and the company call you up
a year later and say; ‘if you bring it back in we’ll give you an
upgrade to 580bhp free of charge’ – the MACH2 update is a
bit like that,” says DiGiCo’s Marketing Director, David Webster.
“We knew we had that capability in the SD7’s FPGA engine,
so the performance goes up and there is now a higher
feature set. In most consoles based around DSP processing,
you know that every chip you buy will only do so much – it
has a limited amount of power. So you link those
together and you decide how many of
these chips you can afford to
build into a console and what
you want the feature set to be
– you limit the power in the
design stage by the number of
chips you install. Because of this new FGPA technology, we
are not limited by the DSP engine in there. To continue the
motoring analogy, when we initially released the SD7,
we knew that our engine was capable of 1,000bhp, but we
didn’t know what bits to put in it yet! We gave you that
THE REVIEWER 350bhp last year, but we are going to give you all these extra
STEPHEN BENNETT has been features in the future as you’ve already paid for the engine
involved in music production with the FGPA.”
for over 25 years. Now based in In more specific terms, the MACH2 upgrade features
the wilds of rural Sweden, he
a huge number of enhancements. Dynamic EQ is now
runs Chaos Studios and writes
available on all 256 processing paths, and is individually
books and articles on music
technology. He’s also a film- switchable and easily monitored via the gain reduction/
maker with several music videos expansion meter. The multi-band compressor can now
JOECOAMAD1.QXD and short films 04/03/2009 to his credit. 10:15 be AM loaded Page on all 1 256 paths along with an extra two
www.stephenjamesbennett.co.uk compressors per path – giving an additional 512 instances.
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“There are eight band parametric EQs on the outputs
available to compensate for problematic installations,”
says Webster. “In addition, there’s a dedicated talk-back
facility which can be easily routed to anywhere you want
– even on stage.” When activated, this function also has
the ability to instantly dim the audio to a particular mix by
the desired amount required by the engineer or artist.
Along with upgrades, the MACH2 enhancements
also include something of a first on a digital live console
– the DiGi-TuBe Super FPGA preamp tube emulation.
“It’s got its own drive and bias, just like you have with a
real tube unit,” says Webster. “It’s a great feature because
you can have tube emulation on all 256 paths.” Some
of the previously available effects have been given
an algorithm overhaul in the new upgrade, but there
are also other plug-ins which have been designed to
take advantage of the SD7’s processing power. “We use
the Tiger SHARC chips to run all the typical 32 floating
point stereo effects algorithms such as pitch shifters,
modulation, and delays,” says Webster. “But the Super
FPGA allows you to also have 16 stereo high quality
reverbs – so from a quality point of view we are talking
about something akin to a TC Electronics TC 6000 in
SD7 MACH 2 UPGRADE
SD7 Software Update
there. In a traditional console, you’d need 96 channels
for just the effects returns – so the majority of desks
out there wouldn’t even be able to handle the returns
alone.” DiGiCo claims that this saves you the equivalent
of 48 units or 2.13 metres, of rack space – which could
be a major advantage in a rig designed for live use. “You
don’t really need any extra hardware or plug-ins,” says
Webster. “Everything you need is ‘in the box’ – and that’s
how we have designed the console”. DiGiCo also provides
application specific software extensions (ASE) for the desk
– for example the company’s SD7T Digital Theatre Mixing
system is physically the same product as the ‘standard’
SD7, but it’s the software package which allows you to
operate it as a ‘T’. “Even though it costs you more than
the standard package, if you already own the product
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