All acts were accompanied by their own sound engineers for the FOH mix (and many for the OB). Even though most had no previous experience of Venue this seemed to represent no obstacle. "Everyone was excited about the sound quality, the ease of use and the use of the plug-ins," says Digidesign's Ineke van der Voort, who provided support in the OB truck. All mixes were stored into snapshots.
As the sound designer (and FOH engineer) for this year's DMA, Claus Pedersen was able to choose the console he believed would do the best job within the tight turnaround times, and opted for the Venue as being "the top sounding, most reliable and fastest to work on."
He said: "Everybody was very positive about working with this console - most engineers were using it for the very first time. They loved the logical layout and the double encoder system, and several engineers had downloaded the D-Show software in advance."
Having supervised several similar award shows using different brands of digital consoles Claus believes that for the very first time there was universal satisfaction among the engineers. "The days are numbered where digital consoles only provide total recall facilities," he says. "With Venue it's firstly about the sound quality and simplicity of the user interface - and then of course its total recall abilities."
"A few engineers chose to use external outboards - like TC2290 delay for tapping or M5000 for reverb - but the MIDI programme change for the external outboards was easily set up in a few seconds," reports Claus. However, the bigger 'leap of faith' was probably taken by the OB engineer, Ossian Ryner, who was prepared to go live to air on his first outing with Venue. He reported that he loved the transparency of the sound, the ease of use of the desk, while the ability to switch between live and Pro Tools recordings, tracked from the soundchecks - pulling them back into the console at the exact same levels as they came in - he said was fantastic. As a result he was able to work with the each band's engineers to refine the soundcheck mixes and produce the optimum sound for the live broadcast.
(Lee Baldock)
