Chris Madden is one of an increasing number of sound engineers who have familiarised themselves with Digidesign’s VENUE environment — without needing to venture near an operator’s manual. The only pages he refers to are the screen versions on his D-Show desk, which he has laid out in a logical two-tier arrangement.

It is 20 years since Mike Scott put his first Waterboys line-up together and jumped to prominence with The Whole Of The Moon. Chris Madden has worked with them for the last six, with many of his show recordings appearing on the band’s latest Karma To Burn live CD — compiled from live performances in Britain and Ireland during 2003-4. Karma To Burn also provided the name for their latest 10-day UK theatre tour, which completed this month.

Chris also handles the front-of-house mix for Charlotte Church and Gabrielle — but it was Liverpool band the La’s that gave him his intro to VENUE, when sound engineer Pab Boothroyd extolled its virtues before handing over the FOH position to Chris, and assigning his desk to higher duties with Paul McCartney.

“Pab called me and asked if I wanted to take over the tour. He had strongly recommended the desk, and although I couldn’t use it on the final dates, by then I had met (Digidesign’s) Mike Case … and was eager to use it with the Waterboys.”

The sound engineer already had widespread experience on other consolidated digital desks (and had previously worked as a manufacturer’s demonstrator). In the studio world he had dabbled with Digidesign’s proprietary Pro Tools.

“And so my VENUE training was more about the interface with Pro Tools and learning Pro Tools techniques … standing in front of it and listening,” he explains. With Pro Tools LE loaded onto his laptop “it became a case of importing the WAV files from a previous 24-track recording and bussing it down to the FireWire card which delivers 18 tracks of audio.”

Thus using VENUE’s Pro Tools LE option to exploit the HD recording options, Chris has produced CD-R’s of every Waterboys show — purely for review purposes, using a couple of ambient mics to pick up the audience atmosphere.

Playing back through Concert Sound’s HK Audio COHEDRA line array system Chris is particularly impressed with the dynamics inherent to VENUE, the consistency of the classic plug-in emulations and D-Show’s ease of use.

“Although technically we had four days of production rehearsals — and Concert Sound sent down a full monitor system so the band had the same set-up as on tour — I could only commit one full day in man hours and had to rely on picking up VENUE on the fly — which was a doddle.”

After six years at FOH command centre, Chris Madden knows how to deliver a mix that will satisfy Mike Scott and the band. Despite the use of traditional Celtic instruments in the folk rock tradition — such as flute and fiddle — he uses the plug-ins to dirty up the sound.

To do this, Chris deploys Line 6 Amp Farm effects on the acoustic and bass guitars to replicate some of the classic guitar amp sounds, stating “the consistency they provide is amazing”. Other plug-ins he is using include Trillium Lane Labs TL Space convolution reverb, Digidesign’s ReVibe room modeling reverb, Bomb Factory’s Fairchild compressors and the impressive LA2A plug-in on the bass. “Putting all the uptempo acoustic guitars through the Amp Farm plug-ins gives the sound a bit of grunge,” he says. “Being able to have that consistency every night — along with that killer bass sound — is amazing.”

Chris loves the D-Show’s responsiveness, and has everything assigned to two pages on the desk. “It really is true recall,” he says. “I have moved the drums onto the second layer — so everything from there upwards is on the top layer, along with the returns from my delay. The stereo effects returns I use as normal … I have a VCA master for the drums, so everything is in front of me all the time.”

The only outboard effect he used with the Waterboys was an SPX 990 for the tap pedal delay to ensure it remained firmly in sync — everything else was off the board. With a line-up that has remained consistent for the past three years the rapport between the Waterboys and their house engineer is consummate, and classic songs like Fisherman’s Blues have rarely sounded so fresh.

As a result, Chris Madden vows to spec VENUE on his rider “at every opportunity” — a decision which he is eager to qualify. “I love the user interface — I know without looking where to find anything without ever needing to consult a manual. The sound is phenomenal and the built-in graphics are wonderful — it’s never a case of saying ‘The mic pre can’t …’, for instance, because on this desk it always can!”