From Left to Right; Guy, Lion Babe, Howard
In 2014, brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, better known by the name Disclosure, went on tour to promote the release of their debut album ‘Settle’. The album, released in 2013, was met with both critical and commercial success, reaching the No 1 spot in the UK album charts and going on to be certified Platinum, as well as being nominated for the Mercury Prize.
For their live performances, Disclosure came to rely on a couple of small RME Fireface UC’s to manage audio interface duties in and out of their on-stage computers. After a triumphant homecoming gig in Brixton Academy in November 2014, they decided to go back to the drawing board and design the ultimate playback and performance system for their particular style of electronic music. They debuted their new setup at Parklife festival on the 6th June 2015, along with their performance at WildLife15 the next day – Disclosure and Rudimental’s own festival. Synthax Audio UK were lucky enough to be invited down to their rehearsals, where we spoke to Alex Turner who, along with Sean Lascelles, looks after the performance and playback systems.
While the basic elements of the setup remain unchanged, the band wanted to add more instruments, as well as swap their analogue connections (between their on stage stations) to digital, in order to achieve the best possible clarity of sound arriving at the loudspeakers. They also wanted to introduce full system redundancy at every step, ensuring that there would never be a quiet moment.
On one side of the stage is Howard, who has a MainStage (Logic Pro) system running through an RME MADIface XT interface. Howard then feeds all of his sounds via MADI into Guy’s rig on the other side of the stage, where Guy is running Ableton Live. But as you might imagine, it’s a bit more complicated than that!
Disclosure’s full live setup, with Ableton Live and Mainstage running alongside several pieces of RME and Ferrofish
Firstly, there are actually two computers (A and B redundancy) at each station, each of which is equipped with an RME MADIface XT. All of the group’s instruments and drum pads are plugged into a MIDAS XL48 mic pre unit, which is capable of splitting the signal into two identical ADAT outputs. These outputs are then fed into two Ferrofish A16 Mk-IIs, which in turn feed into the A and B computers via the RME MADIface XT’s. In this way, there is redundancy even of the inputs to the computers.
Each computer then outputs a MADI stream which goes into a MADI switcher box. The switch outputs two identical MADI streams which are fed from rack to rack – Howard’s to Guy’s. Once again, after Guy’s station, two MADI streams go to another switcher, again outputting two identical streams. This time however, they go to an RME ADI6432 MADI interface, in order to make use of the unit’s AES converters.
Using RME’s highly flexible Totalmix mixing and routing software (free with every RME interface), two duplicated sets of AES channels, 1-16 and 17-34, are fed to FOH and the monitors respectively. Total mix is acting as the splitter system, and according to Alex they “couldn’t work without it.” For broadcasting purposes, they also have the option to take analogue broadcast feeds out of the Ferrofish A16 Mk-II units, or a MADI stream coming off of the FOH or Monitor racks.
In the rack; an RME ADI-6432, 2x RME MADIface XT and 2x Ferrofish A16 MK-II
When asked how the Disclosure team were finding the setup, Alex told us that they are “very, very pleased to be using RME equipment on this project.” He continued, “It’s super reliable, and the drivers are super rugged. Throw in Totalmix as well and its an incredibly flexible system too. The build quality is rugged, and the sound quality is right up there as well. Also, it’s the right price. Expensive enough to know that the right stuff has been put in to make it right, but not so expensive that you feel you are just paying for a name. We know that RME are about the products rather than the name, and that really shows. All the things that RME strive for are exactly the things that we need on stage. Reliability, solid drivers, and especially the flexibility of Totalmix for this project. This system gives us top functionality and top reliability.”
Alex concludes “This playback rig is very cutting edge – it’s got every functionality that any tech would dream of in a playback and performance system. The band wanted everything at their fingertips as if they had computers on stage, but the crew wanted 100% flexibility and reliability, and with RME that’s exactly what we got!”
Alex also wanted to thank Rob Masters, Synthax Audio UK’s Product Manager, who he described as Key Consultant on the system design. Thanks to the flexibility of RME, Alex said that every time he had a question, Rob was able to provide him with a solution. But he also complimented Rob’s knowledge, saying “He was classic, always just coming up with just the right answer to use the RME flexibility to the max. And he always seems to know the answer – he never seems to have to do any research. It’s fair to say it probably wouldn’t have happened without him.”
Thanks to Alex Turner for providing us with the details for this article. Disclosure’s second album ‘Caracal’ is scheduled for release on September 25th 2015. To keep up to date with the band, check out the Disclosure website.
Click here to find out more about the RME Fireface UC
Click here to find out more about the RME MADIface XT