PERTH, Australia — After taking delivery of a Soundcraft Vi6 digital live console, Jands Production Services (JPS) whisked it out the door and onto a tour for Australian singer/songwriter Delta Goodrem’s tour, where Ben Shapiro, the tour’s monitor engineer, gave it high marks. Shapiro, pictured with the console here, echoed that praise for the support provided by JPS itself.
“Last year I had to do a two-week fill in on a tour that was using a Vi6 so I had some idea of what it could do” as a monitor console, Shapiro said. “I was more than happy to take one out because it’s the most outstanding digital console I’ve used thus far.
“I was very surprised at how smooth the top end of the top end is considering it’s a 48K console and how little latency it has. It doesn’t use any jitter suppression yet the top end is phenomenal. A combination between great clocking, amazing pre amps and an amazing operating system gives the result of fantastic high end and a fairly low bit rate.”
Shapiro was particularly impressed with Soundcraft’s strategy of keeping the operating system in the Vi6 a work in progress, with buttons on the console yet to be enabled.
“I really like this because, unlike other companies, when Soundcraft release versions of software they don’t have bugs in them and they won’t commit to something until it has been well tested,” he said. “Really, they’ve released a $125,000 console with buttons on it that need to be enabled, but with every new introduction of software, they can introduce new features to the console. However, the console at the moment with the buttons yet to be enabled is completely usable and flexible. In fact the operating system is so user-friendly it’s frightening.”
Shapiro added that the Vi6’s work surface was easy to use for mixing music. “The signal path comes in and the signal flows, it’s very easy to use and feels like a real console,” he said. “Ergonomically, when you’re standing behind it it’s very comfortable.
“Another thing that took me by surprise was that the channel EQ, compressor and gate sound fantastic,” Shapiro added. “I can’t think of another digital console that sounds that good.”
Unlike consoles that have plug-in software-based effects units built into them, the Vi6 comes with a full Lexicon package.
“It’s actually a hardware based unit in the form of a double PCM card that slips into your local rack,” he said. “It’s the module out of the Lexicon 960 reverb, which is their flagship model, so when you’re actually using the effects — being the reverbs and delays in it — they are absolutely 100 percent outstanding. The result is as good as a Lexicon 960, one of my favorite reverbs in the world, and very important to me when doing in ear monitors.”
Shapiro also gave kudos to the JPS crew, including crew chief Pat Richardson, monitor rigger Tim Seconi, production manager Rob Miles and FOH engineer James “Oysters” Kilpatrick.
For more information, please visit www.jands.com.au.
