Redundant Playback & Plugins for Jacob Collier
In the pre-planning stages of the Djesse Vol.4 World Tour, Technical Director Ben Bloomberg had been looking into finding the right device for a new Playback & MIDI system and had been in discussions with us at DAD.
The requirements for the Jacob Collier rig were complex and also needed to be flexible as the artist in question is renowned for his creative ideas and wide scope for technical experimentation and improvisation.
“We were very excited by the flexibility offered by the platform, given we often bounce between Dante and MADI connectivity for different projects. Our rigs have changing needs including looping, live effects, virtual instruments, and playback. With the recent release of Control | Pack, the Core 256 uniquely offered failover and redundancy customizable to these needs with IO capability beyond any existing products, even at high sample rates. The fact the unit is so small is the icing on the cake.”
Jacob’s team brought in Toby Burrow to design and build the new system; he and Ben began to bounce ideas back and forth. Toby had been working on a design for a modular fly rig with the feature that the most vital parts would slide out and carry on in a 1535 Peli. There were 5 designs drawn up and budgeted centered on the Core 256. The DAD units allowed for so many possibilities that this planning stage produced many solutions to the problem. The options were refined to select the best suited and most budget friendly configuration. After a week of design and programming in London, Toby created a flexible, flyable solution that has served the team and Jacob flawlessly for their 2025 entire touring year.
Toby programs the new rig with Keyboard and Vocalist Erin Bentlage
Toby Burrow walks us through the rig
Two Core 256 units and four laptops
At the Playback Station, Toby Burrow has four Mac Pro laptops running Ableton Live.
Two of them run backing tracks and timecode – redundantly. And the other two handle effect plugins, virtual instruments and samples – redundantly. This is served by a pair of Core256 sharing Dante and Thunderbolt connectivity to the laptops via DADLink, with Thunderbolt providing low latency for keyboards and drum samples, and tracks and timecode via DVS. Keys and playback have independent sample accurate failover, with keys failover linked to the playback allowing both to switch simultaneously should playback fail. Any component in the chain can be removed without impacting the audio output.
Jacob Collier Playback & MIDI System
Ultra compact solution
The overall rig is very compact, but the tray holding the two Core 256 units along with two Mio MIDI routers can actually slide out into a carry on Peli
This allows Toby to bring that part of the rig into the cabin when flying off to the next gig, ensuring that even if the rest of the rack somehow gets lost in transition, the show can still go on!
Total control and tonnes of channels
“The Control | Pack system has been the best digital switch that I’ve used, or from any system that I’ve built. Period.
The functionality and the ins and outs allow you to have a very flexible system. In fact, I’ve never had anything that has so many ins and outs in such a small rack space.”
– Toby Burrow
