DirectOut For Audio Solutions Excel In Tough Touring Conditions

DirectOut is the creator of PRODIGY.MX, a multiformat Audio Matrix that interface with the whole range of protocols offered by DirectOut. The PRODIGY.MX is used by Nils Labenz, a hugely experienced monitor engineer, who is currently on tour with German metalcore band, Electric Callboy.

By integrating techno beats in metal music, Electric Callboy has rewritten the rules for a metal band. Blending genres and having fun with their videos, they are taking the world by storm on their latest tour, TEKKNO. Their most recent collaboration with Japanese kawaii metal band, BABYMETAL, has enjoyed huge success and they have built on this throughout the year, with sold-out dates across the globe. The band finished up 2024 with three performances as part of the Australian Good Things Festival in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. 2025 promises even more performances, beginning on February 1st with their own music festival, Escalation Fest, in Oberhausen, Germany.

The PRODIGY.MX fulfills a variety of tasks within the Electric Callboy audio workflow. Firstly, the band uses it to supply redundancy for the playback system, utilizing EARS (Enhanced Automatic Redundancy Switching) to ensure the switch is interruption-free. It is also the Dante Clock Master for the entire network and, when required, uses the MADI card with SRC to forward audio signals to Outside Broadcast trucks for events such as the Rock am Ring Festival, held at the Nürburgring racetrack in June 2024.

Nils (Labbi) Labenz began working with the band in 2022 for the HYPA HYPA tour. As a monitor engineer, his main concerns were in-ear-monitoring and on-stage audio systems, but his role has steadily increased to include backing tracks and on-stage communications.

The band were introduced to the PRODIGY series when Jan Euler, Electric Callboy’s guitar tech, read an online article about DirectOut. He shared it with Pascal Schillo, the band’s guitarist, and producer for many of their music videos, who got in touch with DirectOut and its German partner, sphereo distribution. Jonas Gehrmann, founder and owner of sphereo was only too happy to give the band more information, consulting on how the devices could improve their redundancy and conversion solutions.

"The PRODIGY.MX is now the central component of our audio system," Labenz explains. "We use two Apple Mac Minis as backing track players and each is connected separately to a Dante card in the PRODIGY. A third Dante card is used for the rest of our audio network. EARS automatically switches between the two Dante cards. We have redundant network switches at every position on the audio network. This means that all signals have redundancy at every point and can always continue to be used for live mixing and recording."

In addition to the PRODIGY.MX, the sound team also utilize three ANDIAMOs as analog to digital convertors. ANDIAMO is a powerful conversion tool and shares the high sonic qualities of the PRODIGY series. Electric Callboy use the Dante Network cards to convert analog signals for the guitars and IEMs onstage, with the third ANDIAMO unit forming part of the redundant system. Working alongside the PRODIGY.MX, these devices from DirectOut offer a robust and stable solution for unforgiving touring schedules.

"The PRODIGY.MX runs super stable and has always delivered under any conditions," Labenz says. "Since installing it in May, we've performed more than 30 shows across Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, and it has run exactly as it should at every show. Despite tough touring conditions, there hasn’t been one error message or misbehavior."

It is not just the stable performance of the PRODIGY series that Labenz has come to enjoy, the support granted by sphereo and DirectOut is of huge importance, as he found out when Jonas Gehrmann assisted with their new set up.

"Jonas came to the Electric Callboy Studio and helped me set up the PRODIGY for the first time," Labenz recalls. "He configured the system controls with me, and it all went very well. We had a relaxed audio-nerdy day with great technical discussions, and it helped a lot with operation and configuration."

Even when the environment changes, the PRODIGY.MX is still the best tool for the job and Labenz relies on his PRODIGY.MX wherever the band performs, even taking it with them to TV studios. The band recently appeared on German late night show TV Total XXL, a huge music show filmed in the Lanxess Arena, an 18,500-seater venue in Cologne.

"The band performed live, as part of the show. The TV setting is a whole different world for me, it was exciting," he concludes. "The PRODIGY again acted as a bridge between us and the broadcast networks. It was good to have that reliability with us. The PRODIGY is super robust, high-end equipment, perfect for rough every-day and touring use."

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