Fools Garden , a German band, released “Lemon Tree” in 1995, catapulting them to the top of the charts internationally. “Lemon Tree” was translated into over 40 languages and has sold over six million copies. Since that time, Fools Garden has played concerts all over the world to audiences as large as 100,000.

Their most recent concert series is completely unplugged, a fairly common tour for a band of this caliber to embark upon. When their engineer, Steffan Ruthof, had to compile a gear list for the world tour, he thought of Mackie.

“One of the most important factors for the choice of a mixing console was that it needed to be high-quality, ultra-compact and, of course, deliver reliable hardware and software,” remarked Ruthof. “It was also very important to record shows with the least possible effort…so it didn’t take long to discover the Mackie TT24. We knew that the Mackie preamps have always been very good and the optical ADAT I/O seemed to have been made for us.”

Mackie’s TT24 is a fully digital 24-bit/96kHz mid-sized console which gives engineers full automation and recall of levels, EQ, effects, routing and more. And unlike other digital consoles, designed primarily as recording desks, the TT24 puts gobs of standard analog and digital I/O right on the rear panel. Not to mention being far easier to learn and use by the average live sound engineer.

Ruthof continues, “The TT24 is really intuitive. After a short period of time, I was able to handle the desk effortlessly. It’s a powerful, reliable and compact digital desk. Working with it is really fun!”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Fools Garden’s Unplugged tour has been extended into 2009. Check out their website for tour dates. If you would like to learn more about the TT24, including the DS3232 Digital Snake and the all-new Dolby Lake Processing Card, please visit the TT System32 site.