New York, NY (March 12, 2026)—After you have more than 31 billion streams, five chart topping studio albums and 29 singles under your belt, Halsey has earned the right to look back a bit—and it was in that spirit that she embarked on her Back to Badlands world tour, which ended last month. Tying into her Badlands album from 2015, the production hit North America, Europe and Australia; throughout the five-month run, FOH engineer James Butera and monitor engineer Schyler Blackman made use of audio gear provided by Clair Global.
The tour began far more smoothly for Butera than his 2023 journey with Halsey did. On opening night of that tour, his previous console experienced a catastrophic failure and, coupled with compatibility issues, he made the choice to switch to a different manufacturer. As a result, both he and Blackman are using DiGiCo Quantum 338 desks, chosen in part due to their compatibility with the tour’s existing Dante playback system, allowing him to streamline the audio rig with DMI Dante cards while reducing rack space, too.
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“DiGiCo’s I/O flexibility and stability were the two big selling points,” Butera recalls. “We cut the amount of rack space and gear in half when we switched to DiGiCo and we no longer started festival set changes with, ‘hold on, I need to power cycle’, which was great! Global availability is also excellent. Every festival you walk into, it’s a DiGiCo, which is reassuring. There are a lot of administrative details that make DiGiCo an easy choice for a global act.”
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Over at stageside, the move to new desks changed things for Blackman as well. “I’ve been flitting in and out with DiGiCo since 2015, depending on whether I get to choose, obviously,” Blackman explains. “I’m using a LiveBox, a bunch of outboard gear and Dante. Having one system that is compatible with all of the different players in the game is really, really nice.”