Roland Systems Group (RSG) teamed up with South West Audio to put the first RSS M-400 Digital Consoles in front of a Glastonbury festival stage. RSG's Peter Heath and Martin Thomas joined the crew working on the BBC Introducing Stage, which had M-400 desks at both front-of-house and monitor positions, connected by the RSS Digital Snakes which could also be found on the Park Stage.

"All the bands on the BBC Introducing Stage are unsigned so they tend not to have their own engineers," explains Mark Bott, system designer and head sound engineer for South West Audio. "This gave us the ideal testing ground for Roland's new M-400 digital console; essentially we had a festival situation with hardly any guest engineers."

Teamed with the Cat5E configurable Digital Snakes, the M-400 represents a formidable festival package - super-compact, lightweight, with excellent sound quality and a highly intuitive user interface. Making its UK festival debut, it was under pressure to deliver: the BBC Introducing Stage, a showcase for up-and-coming artists nominated by BBC new music shows across the country, hosted more than 30 bands this year. Performances were carried live on a continuous webcast, and headliners The Wombats enjoyed a special live slot on Radio 1. All bands were being recorded for future broadcast.

"The M-400 was really quick to set up, and we all felt that its worksurface was very intuitive and easy to use," continues Mark Bott. "In the context of its cost, you simply cannot go wrong. For the BBC stage, it was perfect and we really enjoyed using it, especially features like being able to offer 2-channel recording onto a USB stick. In other festival environments, with numerous guest engineers, there may be the usual issues of familiarity but these will be solved with time and with training, as with any new digital console."

South West Audio, which was providing PA support for 3 Glastonbury stages and supplying kit to quite a few more, welcomed the savings in manpower and time that came with Roland's lightweight CAT5e Digital Snakes. "All our engineers have commented on how clean and clear the signal was."

For the open-air Park Stage, featuring a diverse list of performers including Pete Doherty, Cerys Matthews, Dizzee Rascal and Brazilian electro-rock sensation CSS, the Snakes had to be buried. With the front-of-house mix position some 40 metres from the stage, South West Audio used both the S-1608 and S-4000 versions of the digital multicore to run 48 channels of audio, including returns and comms lines, with a split to the monitor console, plus a full redundant system.

"At the BBC Introducing Stage, we had to fly the multicore and that was really simple," says Mark Bott. "At the Park Stage, our only options were to use cable ramps which would have had consequences for the budget, or to bury it. With the Digital Snakes, you vastly reduce the risks of an accident, such as someone putting a spade through the multicore, and it costs so little that we can just leave it buried after the event! And by running one extra cable, we can have full redundancy which gives us the confidence that the system is going to run, no matter what."

The systems were accompanied into the Glastonbury fields by Peter Heath and Martin Thomas from RSG, who worked with South West Audio for the duration of the festival, helping to bury their digital multicores as well as mix the showcase bands. "We've seen the desk working flawlessly without any issues being raised over input or output capability," says Peter Heath. "About six visiting engineers used it, and reported that they found the M-400 interface to be very intuitive, logical and easy to work with, and that they thought it sounded excellent. Both the M-400 and the Digital Snakes have lent themselves perfectly to this application."