BRUSSELS, Belgium – For a tour for Ozark Henry, which is touring arenas up to 6,000 capacity in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxemburg through spring and early summer, FOH engineer Tom Janssen and monitors mixer Marcel Cortleven are using Soundcraft's Vi platform for the first time.
The band, Ozark Henry (which is also the stage name of founder Piet Goddaer) will follow this tour with festival performances, then continue with 30 to 40 Benelux theatre dates in the fall.
Janssen is also the in-house head technician at Brussels' Ancienne Belgique. Cortleven has worked for many of the country's leading bands.
Stef De Pooter, Audio XL Belgium's general manager, knew that both engineers had worked extensively in other digital environments but were looking for a change, so he suggested they review Soundcraft.
Janssen and Cortleven both liked the analog feel of the Vi platform and the fact that they could accomplish extreme mixing techniques much more easily than on other consoles they had worked with.
"They loved the whole structure – which was far easier to navigate than other desks they had used," said De Pooter. "They found it very clean and were amazed by the sheer sound and musicality of the Vi consoles."
A Vi4 was proposed for FOH and Vi1 for the stage – but De Pooter was already thinking beyond that. "We needed a rental company customer for the desks – and decided to make them ultimately tourable in a dry hire situation." Enter nearby production hire outfit, M&L Productions, run by Luc Meykens.
De Pooter then contacted Thomas Verspaendonck from cabling company Livepower/Caponline and outlined his requirement.
"They make these incredible custom patch panels and cabling assemblies, patch blocks, patching systems and panel engravings," he said, recalling how previously they had developed universal patch panels to allow any engineer or sub-renting production company to connect up to the stage racks.
With M&L Productions moving increasingly into dry hire, he repeated the commission, while for the Ozark Henry tour itself Audio XL's in-house technical guru Udo Vanmechelen devised a fiber link that would send digital audio, data and Ethernet from the FOH Vi4 to the local rack, stationed together with the shared stage box by the Vi1 in Monitor World.
"Everyone loved the idea of a shared stagerack solution for both consoles to keep the footprint as small as possible (which helps transportation) and all the racks on stage," said De Pooter.
The Vi platform lends itself well to this kind of setup," explains Vanmechelen. "We send digital audio, data, Ethernet and even intercom over fiber to the Vi4s at FOH and to the stagerack, which in this case is shared with the Vi1." This provides overall analog mic gain masters for FOH and monitors, while on the Vi4 there is still +18dB/-36dB digital trim to adjust if needed at FOH.
All of this appealed to M&L's Luc Meynkens when considering the desk. His company already runs Soundcraft's MH3 and MH4 analog boards as well as an inventory of JBL VerTec 4888 with infra subs powered by Crown I-Tech HD amps, JBL VRX and Lexicon/BSS/dbx outboard. He had planned to enter the digital world this year in any case, said De Pooter. "Luc loved the footprint, particularly of the Vi1, and the analog path … so this has just brought the process forward and given them more options."
The two Vis supplied by M&L are packaged as a straightforward plug-and-play system. "The set will only go out fully packaged with digital and analog cabling, including 12in/4out stage boxes, and made to measure snakes on multiconnectors and patch panels with no need to touch the racks," De Pooter said.
"This kind of service is what our customers expect from us," concluded Meykens.
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