BADEN, Germany – The 1,700-seat Buehne Baden Theatre hosts plays, operas, musicals, symphony concerts, big bands and rock concerts. Known for its excellent acoustics, the venue was recently equipped with a DiGiCo SD7T console.
"We specified the SD7T for its flexibility and good sound, while the enormously powerful cue list, combined with the aliases, is just what we need for theatre productions and musicals," said Joerg Humer, one of the theatre's two chief sound engineers.
"We needed a powerful desk with a small footprint and SD7T proved to be just the right tool," added Humer's fellow chief sound engineer Andreas Ivancsics. "Compared to other consoles, you get a lot more for your money with the SD7T. In fact, for me no other product offers comparable processing power, channel and auxiliary count.
"The fact that you have no external DSP racks, but get double power supplies, double DSPs and double computers inside a console just 1.5 m wide speaks for itself. And on top of all that, it's very cool," Ivancsics said.
Supplied by DiGiCo's Austrian distributor, TON Eichinger Professional Sound Systems, it was a straightforward matter to configure the console with the Theatre's existing PA, all speakers being run via the SD7's on-board matrix.
"Never before have we had a delay on every matrix nodal point. Now speaker setup is much quicker, while we can be more creative. Indeed, we have found that we can achieve better sound using less EQ than with our previous analog desk," said Humer. "We even have a session report on-board, which can be emailed or printed."
The SD7T's ease of use meant that it only took a few hours of training from TON Eichinger's Othmar Eichinger before Humer and Ivancsics got straight to work on a show.
"Most functions are self-explanatory and the overview is excellent – perfect labelling and the changing colours of controls make everything easier," Humer said. "The onboard effects are also very useful for music and theatre work. The reverbs integrate extremely well with any direct signal, allowing us to put sounds in the right perspective and distance."
Ivancsics added, "I really like the fact that all the necessary controls are on the surface. We don't get lost on parameter pages or deep menu structures. And there are always several ways to complete a task.
"Smaller shows can be easily handled by a single engineer, while on bigger productions one engineer mixes vocals while the other mixes the instruments and effects. This is only possible because of the SD7T's independent input surfaces, two independent solo busses and the custom fader banks. It's the ideal solution for the huge variety of productions we stage," Ivancsics said.
For more information, please visit www.digico.org .
