Birchmere Music Hall Delivers Exceptional Sound Quality with Soundcraft Vi Series Consoles

March 29, 2019

-- ALEXANDRIA, Va.-Legendary music venue The Birchmere recently collaborated with HARMAN Professional Solutions to upgrade their facility with new Soundcraft Vi Series consoles for events, live performances and more.

Established in 1966, The Birchmere is a world-class music venue with a 1,500-person capacity standing-room concert hall and a 500-person capacity seated theater. The Birchmere hosts over 300 performances per year from internationally recognized artists such as Lyle Lovett, Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt and more. In order to ensure a more streamlined workflow when integrating with professional touring acts, The Birchmere decided to upgrade the analog consoles in both of their venues to state-of-the-art digital mixing consoles. Together with resident audio advisor Tim Kidwell, they selected two Soundcraft by HARMAN Vi3000 consoles and two Vi2000 consoles.

A lot of the guest engineers coming in didnt want to see analog consoles anymore, said Tim Kidwell, Audio Advisor, The Birchmere. Some people started to complain about having to use them, so we knew it was time to upgrade. Ive been a real fan of the Vi Series consoles ever since they first came out. I started using them on the road, and not only was the sonic quality impressive, but the interface is superior to a lot of very well known consoles on the market today. The learning curve is quick and easy for anybody converting to a digital board from analog. Its a very user-friendly console.

Tim selected Vi3000 digital live sound consoles for front of house position and monitor position in the concert hall for their efficiently designed control surface and Vistonics II touchscreen interfaces. The Vi3000 is the only console in its class that can be used by two engineers at the same time, allowing resident FOH engineer Justin Kidwell to quickly and easily assist touring engineers.

I love the layout, its very intuitive, said Justin Kidwell, FOH Engineer, The Birchmere. Ive never had to look up how to do anything in the manual, which is really nice. You dont want to have to stop what you're doing and flip through 200 pages in order to figure out how to turn one feature on or off. Theres clear labeling which is so important, especially for guest engineers who have never used the board before.

Vi2000 consoles were deployed in front of house position and monitor position in the theater to run the monitor rigs for their versatile routing options and intuitive interface. Vi2000 consoles combine the unique Vistonics-based control surface with Soundcraft SpiderCore-a powerful integrated DSP and IO engine for on-board signal processing. The Vi2000 includes a number of useful timesaving tools such as vMIX automatic microphone mixing, BSS DPR901ii Dynamic EQ and Lexicon Multi-effects.

The on-board Lexicon effects are one of my favorite things about the Vi Series consoles, said Justin. They're so nice and warm. They're some of the best effects Ive had to work with.

Everybody loves the new Vi Series consoles, said Tim. People who have never worked on one before come in and within 15 minutes theyre saying; Wow, this is a nice board! Why dont more people use this?' Weve had nothing but positive responses to the consoles.

ABOUT HARMAN

HARMAN (harman.com) designs and engineers connected products and solutions for automakers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide, including connected car systems, audio and visual products, enterprise automation solutions; and services supporting the Internet of Things. With leading brands including AKG , Harman Kardon , Infinity , JBL , Lexicon , Mark Levinson and Revel , HARMAN is admired by audiophiles, musicians and the entertainment venues where they perform around the world. More than 50 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and connected car systems. Our software services power billions of mobile devices and systems that are connected, integrated and secure across all platforms, from work and home to car and mobile. HARMAN has a workforce of approximately 30,000 people across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. In March 2017, HARMAN became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

GLOBAL

David Glaubke

Director, Public Relations

HARMAN Professional Solutions

+1 (818) 895-3464 O

+1 (818) 470-7322 M

2019 HARMAN International Industries, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Harman Kardon, Infinity, JBL, Lexicon and Mark Levinson are trademarks of HARMAN International Industries, Incorporated, registered in the United States and/or other countries. AKG is a trademark of AKG Acoustics GmbH, registered in the United States and/or other countries. Features, specifications and appearance are subject to change without notice.

LINK:	https://www.soundcraft.com/en-US/news/birchmere-music-hall-delivers-ex...
	See more stories from soundcraft

Most recent headlines