44 l August 2013
www.psneurope.com
livefeature
A pair of Yamaha CL5s were employed to solve complex delay panning issues on Tell — Das Musical in Switzerland
marketing communications manager Steve Oppenheimer, “including the Smaart RTA, Spectrograph and wizards that help you tune your PA to the room, calculate and set delay times and do a quick output check. “We also released Capture 2.0
recording software for StudioLive mixers, which adds one-click recording, safety features and tools that automatically organise your live recordings on your hard drive and integrate virtual soundcheck, so that you can load a previous session, get a mix going and start recording without interrupting your workflow.” DiGiCo stresses the need to
Digital
Phil Wardcatches up with developments in the fast-changing live console sector
HOW ENHANCEDis your workflow? Take a look around you: if you don’t have everything within arm’s reach, able to launch a NASA mission to Mars with a dismissive flick of the wrist while all the time taking up less room than two American tourists… nah, forget it. You’re so analogue. The issue of footprint is a
perennial one in the world of digital consoles, and it’s no surprise to find UK manufacturer Allen & Heath talking about “distilling the smartest of digital mixing into a rackmountable console”. According to Nicola Beretta, digital product specialist at Allen & Heath, the company’s ultimately compact Qu-16 crams it all in, packing “a powerful DSP, a touchscreen, 17 motorised faders, recallable preamps, a USB interface, direct multitrack recording over USB media and five cores of ARM processing” into 19 inches. “Our engineers came up with a frame which is designed for beauty, strength, ease of rack mounting and optimal airflow,” Beretta adds, “eliminating the need for any fans.”
dividend The SD Series from DiGiCo
DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL Being digital, of course, there is always tell of new software for existing platforms. “All digital consoles can be potentially upgraded in terms of features via software, and we’re very well placed at all levels to do this,” confirms David Neal, senior manager, marketing at Soundcraft Studer. “The advantage of the Vistonics user interface is that new features can be easily added without the need to add more hardware so
existing consoles can benefit from rich new features, protecting the client’s investment. “For example, the Soundcraft
Vi Series gains the ability to create 32 stereo mix busses and new features specifically designed for the stage monitoring environment, while Studer’s Vista range has gained the highly
praised VistaMix automatic microphone mixing system for use on unscripted shows with multiple open microphones.” US mixer maker PreSonus describes its focus on integrated hardware and software solutions that simplify mixing and recording a live show. “Within the past 12 months, we integrated Rational Acoustics’ Smaart audio-analysis technology into our Virtual StudioLive mixer control/ editor/librarian software,” says
add “future value” to customers’ purchases, claiming “somewhat of a head start” in the development stakes. “For example,” says managing director James Gordon, “last year, to celebrate multiple anniversaries including DiGiCo’s 10th year, we released significant ‘free of charge’ software and firmware upgrades for all our consoles. In some cases this doubled the amount of available processing.” Bringing the latest tools and functionality into existing platforms remains at the top of Allen & Heath’s agenda. “iLive and GLD both received an important software update this year,” reports Beretta, “opening up an array of new possibilities for the engineer: dynamic EQ, multiband compression, graphic EQ modelling, pitch shifting and rotary speaker emulation. iLive has benefitted from nine major releases so far, making it a future- proof system which can be kept up to speed with a simple, free-to- download firmware update.” Meanwhile Yamaha Commercial Audio reports “ongoing upgrades to the CL and R series firmware, CL Editor and File Converter software and the StageMix app”.
NET PROFIT Increasingly, references to networking among this fraternity will include the adjective ‘intelligent’, raising tempting questions about the precocity of systems before the word was bandied about quite so much. Avid’s recent developments in live sound have been focused on three key areas, according to senior product manager for live systems & consoles Sheldon Radford: intelligent networking, advanced signal processing and
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