The first to sound check was the choir, as they were on last. This involved a very large number of people on stage at once. The three chorus sections each had their own row, with two or three mic's covering each row, place just above head height, looking down on the vocalists.
A section of soloists at the front had each to have their own microphone, 13 in total. Each had to be wired into a multicore separate from the main, which was routed into a second mixer, the stereo output of which was connected to a pair of inputs on the main desk. The connecting process was fairly hard work, as 10m cables were being used for all except the closest few to the multicore, which was set to the right of the stage. Spending the time keeping the excess tidy really paid off when it came to derigging though, meaning we didn't have to deal with a knot of 13 XLR leads.
