Katie Melua's 2004 UK tour has seen some experimentation that led to permanent changes in what the Georgian-born songstress hears every night from her monitor system.

Russell Sladek has the responsibility for Melua's and the band's stage sound. "On this tour, we have been working with new JBL floor monitors," said Sladek. "The speaker processing that came with the system sounded OK on Katie's monitors, but we tried out an XTA on them and the sound just opened up. It was a night-and-day comparison.

"We though it was worth trying and it proved correct. I have used XTAs before and love them. I have done a lot of work with their GQ600 graphic EQ at home in Finland and these are the best."

The other element Sladek wanted was some dynamic compression to work the low-mids on the wedges themselves. "The DiGiCo D5 has so much processing power, but I have much of that set-up in graphic EQ mode instead of dynamics. What I needed was some extra control and when [FOH engineer] Matt Manasse showed me the XTA SiDD, I had to get it off him. I run the dynamic EQ section and pick out just over 300Hz when it needs a little attention."

Manasse had originally requested the SiDD for an upright bass which had two mic channels: "In the end we decided to go to just one mic because Russell just didn't want to let the SiDD go," he commented.

Concert Sound provided the EAW system with Lab.gruppen amplification all round. "To control the PA, I run three DP226 at FOH, all with digital inputs," continued Manasse. "So I can come straight out of the DiGiCo and let the XTAs handle the digital to analogue conversion. With XTA's Audiocore software, it is a very simple and straightforward system."

Pictured left to right: Russell Sladek, Matt Manasse and Tim Peeling.

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