Mixing Dua Lipa on the Road

Santiago, Chile (November 11, 2025)—After a year on the road, Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism Tour is in the home stretch. Having spent the last 12 months visiting  Asiam Australia, New Zealand, Europe, North America and the U.K., tonight sees the production kick off a two-night run in Santiago, Chile’s 49,000-seat Estadio Nacional, and the early December finale isn’t far away. Throughout the entire 80-plus date run, front of house engineer Will Nicholson and monitor engineer Alex Cerutti have overseen a sizable audio system provided by Britannia Row, a Clair Global Company.

Both engineers are mixing on DiGiCo Quantum 852 consoles. At front of house, Nicholson has four SD Racks loaded with 32bit cards, plus an Orange Box with Dante and HMA cards. “I really like the big screens and loads of Macro options, and responsive faders mean the tactile experience is a bit more natural,” he remarked. “Having multiple metering options is extremely valuable, making lots of information available to me. The diagnostic meter on the bridge is a small, but excellent tool. I also really like Mustard processing and I’m also using the MSE expander on a handful of channels, which has been handy.  It’s a quality addition and, thanks to the V20 upgrades, Macros have got even more capable.”

Living It Up Live With Dua Lipa

Adjacent to all that is a Fourier transform.engine used to handle plug-ins. “I’ve made use of the transform suite to access some of my favorite plug-ins, including the UAD Distressor, 1176 and the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor,” said Nicholson. “The transform.engine is very solid, and the automation makes it incredibly versatile. It’s now my only plug-in engine, which has made time alignment so much quicker.”

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For Cerutti, the DiGiCo desks are the latest iteration from a brand he’s mixed on for years. “I’ve been using DiGiCo consoles on and off since the D1 and D5 days and really appreciate not having to create socket files,” he says. “I’ve used SD7s and SD8s and keep coming back to DiGiCo consoles because I don’t have to change my set-up or mix for the console. They are as configurable as I need them to be.” For him, that’s largely centered around moving the layer select buttons to a touch screen, simplifying navigation of multiple channels; the screens also improve his access to channel meters.

“The amount of information I have to hand and the speed at which I can access it makes everything easier,” Cerutti concludes.