Roland Systems Group Take Centre Stage At Glastonbudget Festival

With four stages and over 130 acts, the ‘Mecca of Tribute’ has grown to be the biggest and the best tribute and new music festival in Europe attracting over 7000 visitors over the May Bank Holiday weekend.

Working closely with event production and rental company OneBigStar, the team from Roland Systems Group (RSG) put together a winning combination of products which covered all areas of the festival. This year saw the new M-480 live mixing console play a key role in the event, with one console controlling both FOH and monitors for the large outdoor stage and one console FOH in the big top tent.  Once again, the benefits of the Roland Digital Snakes for a live event, in terms of ease of set up and cost savings were recognized, with a Digital Snake set up on each of the four stages.

RSG took the opportunity of Glastonbudget to demonstrate the new M-480 digital console in the UK and to emphasise it’s capabilities as a live mixing console.   On the main stage, the M-480, in the experienced hands of Neal Allen, took care of both FOH and monitors.  ‘The M-480 is a rock solid piece of kit and did the job well’ he commented.

Launched in April at the Pro Light & Sound, the M-480 is a central unit in a full V-Mixing System with a powerful new mixing engine, which can be integrated with Roland’s Digital Snakes, Personal Mixing and Multi-Channel Recording solutions,

The M-480 V-Mixer features 48 mixing channels and 6 stereo returns. Bussing is strong with a total of 27 consisting of 16 auxiliaries, 8 matrices and full support for Mono, Stereo or LCR sound design. With a configurable choice of available digital I/O boxes, the M-480 can support up to 90 inputs and 90 outputs - all fully assignable via the digital patchbay. The patchbay also has the unique ability to route any input to any output without going through the mixer. Each mixing channel includes 2 stages of dynamics processing, 4-band PEQ, and delay. Dedicated 4-band PEQ, limiting and delay are available on every output.

With a intuitive interface, the console features rapid recall of setups/scenes, 25 - 100mm motorized faders, a high-res color screen, and dedicated channel strip knobs for all bands of EQ, as well as Pan and Gain. Effects processing is strong with six superb quality stereo/dual-mono effects processors as well as twelve 31-band GEQs. Built-in stereo recording/playback uses uncompressed WAV files via USB flash drive.

Also on the main stage, the M-48 personal mixer was used by monitor engineer Graham White, in a unique set up to provide PFL feed. ‘We used the M-48 to separate the reference control between the wedges and in-ear which allowed Graham to preview and also to control the volume of the wedges from the desk’, explained Simon Kenning from Roland.

The M-48 is the next generation live personal mixer that offers musicians the flexibility to control exactly what they want to listen to during their performances. It provides the highest level of sound monitoring quality for both headphones and IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) as well as for wedge and powered monitors. The superb sound quality creates the ideal monitoring environment for live performance and recording as well as studio applications.

In the Big Top tent, engineers were mixing from front of house on a Roland M-480 powered by 2 x S-1608 digital snakes.  In charge of the console, Chris Yeardsley, Assistant Project Manager at OneBigStar commented ‘The M-480 really is bomb proof – which is great because there are volunteer engineers here who have never used a digital console before.  With the M-480, they can pick it up easily because it is so intuitive ’. 

In a smaller marquee, the ‘Charnwood Arts’ tent, new musicians were encouraged to get up and play – some of them for the first time in front of an audience.  Most played acoustic sets, but engineer James Britten had to be prepared for whatever turned up – and had to deal with a variety of setups including a six piece band.  Using a Roland M-300 for the job with a Digital Snake system, James had the flexibility and the features at hand to change setup quickly and easily.  ‘For the price and what they do, you can’t beat Roland products’ he commented, ‘they have the best sound quality and the best user interface compared to other products I’ve used’.
 
The M-300 digital mixing console was used FOH in a smaller covered stage area along with an S-4000S-3208 Digital Snake.  A compact, digital 32 channel live digital mixing console, the M-300 is an ideal choice for any live production.  ‘The M-300 proved popular with all the engineers who used it and some were keen to get hold of one for their own use as they could see how useful it would be in a small venue as you could get rid of racks and replace them with seats!’, added Simon Taylor at OneBigStar.

Once again, the festival was hailed a huge success with the production expertise of OneBigStar and the support of brands such as Roland along with Green Hippo, EV and Laney.