Elite Sound and Lighting purchases Soundcraft consoles
Published: ASIA
AUSTRALIA: Following a demonstration given by Jands, Canberra-based A/V production and installation supplier Elite Sound and Lighting recently purchased a Soundcraft Si Compact 16 console, an Si Compact 32 desk, and two Soundcraft Compact Stagebox digital multicore systems.
‘We always spend a lot of time researching products, which is exactly what we did when we decided to invest in some compact digital audio consoles,’ commented Darren Russell, Elite’s managing director. ‘We looked at what all the manufacturers in the market had to offer but in terms of versatility and features, we felt that Harman’s Soundcraft consoles had the edge over the competition.’
Mr Russell found that ‘a large part of the equation was their ability to either take analogue inputs and outputs on the back of the console or use a Cat-5 digital multicore system, or a combination of the two. Plus we’ve had some larger, older Soundcraft consoles in our hire department for many years and they’ve always sounded great and their reliability is always good,’ he furthered. ‘It’s all industry standard gear that sounds great.
‘For what they are and at their price point, the consoles sound amazing,’ he enthused. ‘Versatility and features for their price were the main reason for their purchase – Soundcraft added a heap of new functionality in their most recent software upgrade, which was great. We ordered them based on a demo of the previous version so we were delighted to have all these new features.’
Mr Russell went on to say that he has found ‘that digital audio consoles are either designed by someone who has never mixed a band or show in their life or, as is evident with the Soundcraft consoles, they come from someone who actually has done live sound. It’s nice to get a live sound console out of the box to find it’s immediately evident that it has been designed by a sound guy.’
Since the purchase, Mr Russell is pleased to note that the team has only needed to look at the manual twice in order to find out how to perform some complex routing. ‘Anyone who has mixed live sound before could get one of these consoles out of its box in its factory state and do a gig on it,’ he insists. ‘That’s how intuitive and user-friendly it is. We have operators with a vast level of experience and they could all use the Compact Si consoles straight away.’