38 l April 2013


www.psneurope.com


broadcastreport RSG devices have made a


notable impression in the church and theatre market – but, it could be argued, touring systems are more rare. “Installations, yes,” agrees


Heath. “The touring market is a harder one to crack, because there are many competitors and they tend to be larger format, while our largest desk is the 24-fader M-480. Some would argue that’s enough. But [many] engineers want desks that have a longer heritage, or have more faders. Having said that, we’ve done an awful lot of events with M-480 or M-400 desks and digital snakes without any issues. But that’s with a newer generation of engineers... The older engineers want to stick to the things they know and like.” Which brings Roland full


circle, he suggests. “…Because there are thousands of consoles out there that would benefit from the Digital Snake. So we will tell our Digital Snake story [still],


because it’s still valid.” But while Heath and his RSG


team extol the virtues of compact mixing, the ‘small footprint’ path is not the only way ahead. “We need the small, compact desks, but we need something different to what we have as flagship, that embraces feedback from the market…” And that’s all he’ll say on the


matter. But there’s another key point of understanding to hammer home here. “We are a systems provider,” says Heath. “Installations into houses of worship, for instance: where there is infrastructure for audio, we can fulfil that. We’re not a console manufacturer: we are ‘systems based’.” From that humble Digital


Snake, launched in 2006, RSG has indeed been able to build systems for users: consoles, personal monitoring, a dedicated high-spec recorder. But the real key, Heath emphasises, is REAC,


With REAC, that wasn’t one to give away; and we weren’t in a position to license and sell it. REAC set up a whole catalogue of people saying, so you can have a high-performing low-cost solution, maybe we need to think about that.”


The M200i mixer will be one of the centrepieces of this year’s product range


or the Roland Ethernet Audio Communication technology: a point-to-point 24-bit/96kHz, low-latency digital audio transport for live sound use and commercial applications. “When we came to the market,


we were very well specified. And I still think REAC is ‘out there’ in terms of what it can do and how the musician can control it, or how they can release the engineer to control it. The R-1000 recorder, that was another niche for us because there weren’t many


others [recorders] around with the functionality. And because it was all connected via REAC, we could add any functionality, because of our own protocol.” But REAC has not been


embraced by the wider community – in an era where users are seeking interoperability, that can’t be a good thing, can it? “Here’s something different,” he suggests. “When Roland [with Sequential Circuits] invented MIDI, we gave it to everyone. The same as V-Link.


Although RSG has the MADI Bridge – developed principally for control of the M-48 PM system – it has not signed up to be a partner with AVB, Dante or any other networking technology. “What I can tell you is this,”


reveals Heath. “There are new audio products [on the way], a different generation [of RSG products], of course they will still have REAC, but they will offer an openness that hasn’t been there before. “There is an acknowledgement,


whichever protocol you are using, you need the ability to talk to other protocols seamlessly,” he states. “And I think we understand that now.”n www.rolandsystemsgroup.co.uk


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