Colorado Symphony Performs DiGiCo Reprise with Quantum 852 Console

DENVER, Colorado - June 2026 - Colorado Symphony has long been at the forefront of audio technology throughout the signal chain at the 2,700-seat Boettcher Concert Hall at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. An early adopter of DiGiCo's SD7, the orchestra upgraded the console with one of the first Quantum engines to ship to the US in 2019, integrated DiGiCo's 4REA4 processing system about 18 months ago, and now has installed DiGiCo's new flagship Quantum 852 at front-of-house, alongside a Fourier Audio transform.engine setup, both supplied by Thornton, Colorado-based Brown Note Productions.

Purchasing the Q852 was a natural progression for me, trying to stay up with where the technology is going, explains Aric Christensen, Colorado Symphony's longtime head of audio. Whenever I see a new product being released by DiGiCo, I want to get in on it because it's such a powerful platform. I'm excited about how powerful it is out of the box and where they're going to take all this technology.

For Christensen, the most significant feature to stand out when he first laid eyes on the Quantum 852 was the surface's new, larger display screens. They are more than twice the size of the SD7 screens, and you can have all these different functions represented. The second part of that is the brightness and the resolution of the screens. I'm inside a concert hall 90 percent of the time, he says, but the orchestra also plays outdoor shows regionally and around the country. And these screens are massively bright. The screens and the brightness really jumped out at me.

There is a consistency in the layout of the consoles throughout the DiGiCo product range, he continues, and that familiarity gave him the confidence to integrate the new Quantum 852 as soon as he could. I installed it in the middle of the busiest part of our season, and people were like, You're crazy!' But I know the software; I know what to expect from all of this. The SD7 Quantum, previously at FOH in the hall, has been repurposed as a monitor, broadcast, or backup console according to the needs of the production, he reports.

Having said that, he continues, You start digging into it and, while everything's familiar, there are a lot of new features here. This thing has exponentially more power than I've ever had before, to the point where I'm still trying to figure out when and how to utilize some of it. For example, he says, I can have individual macros on individual channels. I've got to figure out how I'm going to introduce that into my workflow. It's not a gimmick, but something that really saves time and brings something great to a mix.

The hall's audio equipment is owned by the City of Denver. They've been great partners with me and with Colorado Symphony. One of the things I'm able to explain to city managers during the budget process is the support that comes from DiGiCo and Fourier Audio through Group One, the US distributor, and the Audiotonix Group's network of people in the UK and US. Their after-sales service is second to none.

As for the new system's processing features, I think the biggest change on the Mustard side is that they released a Primary Source Expander that's internal. You can have that available across 128 channels, he says. I'm a big fan, because the more stuff that's internal to the desk is appealing to me because it's one less thing to deal with.

As an early adopter of technology under the Audiotonix brands umbrella, Christensen also purchased a pair of Fourier Audio transform.engine plug-in servers, which integrate directly with DiGiCo Quantum consoles, some time ago. I bought two of them so I could do redundancy, but I'm currently only using one through an Orange Box. After I'd had it set up at front-of-house for a while I moved it to a remote location, where it's tied in over fiberoptics. I'm trying to make my front-of-house position area less crowded and as streamlined as possible, with everything integrated with one unified network system.

Indeed, it was Christensen's experience with Audiotonix's support that also inspired him to integrate DiGiCo's 4REA4 processing system in place of the previous backstage 70V distributed system while also performing an AoIP networking infrastructure upgrade to support Dante and AVB. I thought, how can I get the level of service that I'm used to with DiGiCo and Group One over all the pieces of equipment that I have in my system, except for maybe the speakers and amplifiers? I started looking at the 4REA4 and was able to get that done during the network installation. Having all these different audio system components under one umbrella is the smart way to go, I think, and gives me peace of mind. I'm just one guy, so having these people with me as a family really gives me a level of security, comfort, and confidence.

While Colorado Symphony mostly performs in Boettcher Concert Hall, the 80-piece orchestra of full-time musicians also performs at other Colorado venues during the summer season. For those events, Christensen will take advantage of DiGiCo's Convert software to adapt his console's layout to the console model he rents for the show. For a show at Red Rocks, for instance, he says, I can use a Q338 console. I rent a board from Brown Note, a great rental partner in town, and I can just show up and put my key in there with my session files and templates.

The software also enables Christensen to easily accommodate the needs of visiting engineers who also work on DiGiCo consoles when their artists collaborate with the orchestra. This past summer season, Colorado Symphony collaborated with Beck, the Beach Boys, and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.

I can tell the engineer, I've got all these

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