APAC: Alex Warren’s rise from YouTuber and founding TikTok Hype House creator to chart-topping global pop star has been rapid, with his 2025 single, “Ordinary,” surpassing one billion streams in its first year. Now, as the Grammy-nominated artist takes his six-month Finding Family on the Road world tour through Asia and Oceania following its European and North American legs, his live production is leaning heavily on DiGiCo.

At front of house, James Butera is mixing on a DiGiCo Quantum 338, while monitor engineer Rob Brazinski is working on a Quantum 7, with both consoles supplied by tour sound provider Clair Global.

Butera, whose career has included extensive use of DiGiCo consoles, says his relationship with the brand dates back to the SD7 and SD8 gold-top. “My history dates back to the SD7 and the good old SD8 gold-top,” he says. “I’ve carried every surface but the Q852 so far, and hope to carry them for many more years.”

The Warren tour has grown considerably since its planning stages, taking Butera’s original system of a single SD-Rack and an Orange Box with MADI cards to a significantly larger infrastructure. “Last fall we were a single SD-Rack and an Orange Box with MADI cards,” he shares. “Now we’ve added a second Orange Box to handle 64 channels of Dante, a second SD-Rack, and an SD-Mini for our B-stage inputs and outputs. I had to add a second loop out front to get outboard in and out quickly, and because I maxed out all the MADI, analogue, and AES local ports along with using both DMI slots locally,” Butera explains.

The expanded setup has also pushed the Quantum 338 close to its limits. “I’ve almost maxed out the Q338—I think I have two outputs of DSP left. But I love the Q338. It’s my favourite physical layout aside from the Q852, and I love the screens.”

At monitors, Brazinski initially planned to use a Quantum 5, but opted for the additional control and DSP capacity of the Quantum 7 as the scale of the production became apparent. “The Quantum 7’s been great; it’s been really rock solid. Having the extra set of fader banks and the extra meters has been really nice, just to keep an eye on things during the show in case stuff changes,” he says. “The show has gotten so big with Alex since August of last year. We added three new band members this year and two additional backline techs; it blew up so fast. But the Quantum 7 has handled it super well.”

Brazinski, who first adopted DiGiCo consoles in 2017 and has worked with artists including Kane Brown and Russell Dickerson, is handling a substantial monitor workload. The system sends 16 dedicated mix outputs to 20 transmitters, with six band members—drums, bass, two guitars, keys, and cello—joined by two background vocals and Warren himself. While that accounts for 40 band inputs, talkbacks, comms, video and playback bring the overall requirement close to 95 or 96 inputs, leaving around 16 channels free on the Optocore loop.

Both engineers are also making extensive use of DiGiCo’s onboard processing. Butera says the Quantum 338 is providing processing across his inputs, with Mustard and Spice Rack alongside eight internal effects serving as backups to external FXs. “So I’m definitely leaning on the console.” While some processing remains outside the DiGiCo system, he adds, “the foundation of the mix on the input layer is all inside the console.”

For Brazinski, the extensive onboard processing has allowed him to keep the monitor system largely within the console. “Mustard stuff has been awesome ever since I started using it,” he says. “I did my first tour with Quantum almost three years ago now, and it totally changed everything for me. I’m very notoriously anti-plug-in, just as another failure point, and another thing that’s hard to license and get on flight dates and stuff. So I’m almost all in the box. All of the band inputs have Mustard on them, and I’m using pretty much every feature. I have a minimal amount of outboard—a vocal chain, a band bus chain, and some reverbs—but everything else is on the desk. I’m using a lot of Mustard, a lot of Spice Rack, and pretty much all the internal effects as well. I’ve had really great results and no complaints.”

The size of the touring operation has created another challenge at monitors, with 32 channels of talkbacks, including comms. Brazinski has programmed the Quantum 7 to reduce the amount of manual comms management required during the show, allowing him to keep his attention on Warren. “We’ve got 32 channels of talkbacks, including comms, on this tour. That’s typically the monitor guy’s domain, but it’s sometimes too much to manage by myself,” he says. “Alex is a pretty hands-on artist to mix. He’s very particular and has a very good ear, so my attention needs to be on him for 100 percent of the show.”

The system gives Brazinski’s RF coordinator and monitor tech access to a second solo bus mix through a separate cue transmitter. A GPI footswitch allows Brazinski to mute talkbacks to himself when communications become excessive, while his tech can continue monitoring the traffic and flag anything relevant.

DiGiCo’s OSC capabilities are also being used to streamline communication between backline technicians, musicians and crew. Backline techs can trigger macros in the DiGiCo system to communicate with the musicians or other crew members, reducing the need for Brazinski to act as a communications switchboard. “So I can play less switchboard operator and focus more on the mix,” he says. “It’s quite a bit of programming—I’ve got maybe 150 hours in this file for Alex, most of it just the programming of the macros and getting all the snapshots to work—but once it’s done, it just works, and it’s awesome.”

For Butera, the technology is backed by a support infrastructure that has become an important part of the touring equation. “Honestly, the support is insane, between Chip, Julian, Matt, and the rest of the team,” he says. “You can text or call at any time, day or night, and someone answers immediately. Then there’s the presence at every major festival, with a DiGiCo person floating around, whether it’s just to say hello or to offer support. That speaks volumes to the company’s goal of not only servicing the industry with great products, but with great support as well.”