Welcome back to the blog! This one's for the console nerds. I get asked a fair bit what I actually set up on a DiGiCo before a show, and the honest answer is that most of the time-saving comes from a small handful of macros I build every single time. Not fancy ones. Boring, reliable ones that mean I'm not hunting through menus while the band's looking at me.
Here are the five I build first, in the order I build them.
1. Talkback to wedges
One button, latched, that opens my talkback mic into the wedge mixes and nowhere else. Sounds obvious, but the number of times I've seen someone shout across the stage because the talkback wasn't set up is wild.
The reason I macro it instead of using the console's built-in talkback assignment is control. I want to decide exactly which auxes it hits — wedges yes, IEMs at a lower level, front of house never — and I want it on a physical button I can hit without looking.
Tip: build a second one that goes to IEMs only, at about 10 dB down. In-ear people do not want your talkback at wedge level.
2. The changeover mute
Festival days live and die on changeovers. This macro mutes every input channel that isn't playback or an announce mic in one hit, and unmutes them in one hit. That's it.
What makes it work is a mute group underneath it that I've already built to exclude the things that must stay live — MC mic, walk-in music, whatever the promoter needs. The macro just toggles that group. So when the changeover starts I hit one button, the stage goes quiet, the crew can plug and unplug without a single pop through the PA, and I'm not chasing individual channels.
3. Solo clear
Tiny macro. Massive relief. Clears every solo on the desk.
If you've ever had a solo left on from soundcheck and spent thirty seconds wondering why your headphones are doing something weird while the first song's already going, you know why this exists. I put it right next to my headphone level so it's muscle memory.
4. Snapshot next / previous
I program band sets with one snapshot per song (there's a whole post on that here). So I want a physical “go” and a physical “back one”.
Two things I always do here. First, the “previous” macro is deliberately somewhere I have to reach for, because firing it by accident mid-song is worse than not having it. Second, I build the snapshot recall to respect my recall-safe list, so hitting go never touches the things I've decided are hands-off — usually vocal channel gain and the master.
5. Virtual soundcheck arm
This is the one that's paid for itself the most. One macro that flips the desk between listening to the stage and listening to the multitrack I recorded at the last show.
The macro switches the input source across all the relevant channels and swaps my record arm state. So at 10am in an empty room I can bring up last night's show, build the whole mix, program the snapshots, ring out the wedges against real vocals, and by the time the band walks in for soundcheck I'm making small moves, not big ones.
For the gear heads: this is the DMI/UB-MADI route on the Quantum, straight into a laptop. Nothing exotic. The value isn't the tech, it's that the band gets a soundcheck where I'm already 90% there.
What I don't macro
Anything destructive. I never put “clear all snapshots” or “reset session” on a button, no matter how far away from the others it is. A macro should make the normal show faster. If it could ruin the show, it lives in a menu behind a confirm.
Build them the same way every time
The real trick isn't the macros themselves — it's putting them in the same physical spot on every desk you touch. Talkback bottom-left. Changeover next to it. Solo clear by the headphones. Go and back on the right. After a while you stop looking, and that's when a show file starts to feel like an instrument rather than a computer.
If you've got a macro you can't live without that I've missed, I'd genuinely love to hear it — I always love sharing the craft. Get in touch or find me on the socials.