SAE Dubai adds Venue SC48
Published: MEA
UAE: Dubai’s SAE Institute has recently added an Avid Venue SC48 console to its teaching environment. The purchase was made through local distributor MediaCast.
One of the main reasons for choosing the console was the 32 track firewire recording with its existing Pro Tools system. Also the virtual sound track feature was important for teaching live mixes to students and the array of plugins available was another important factor.
‘The industry is ever changing, and moving to digital was the best way forward to stay as current and offer quality education to our students when they move into the industry,’ said Randula De Silva, head of the audio department at SAE Dubai. ‘The Venue SC48 is a streamlined board that offers features that very few digital boards offer in terms of recording and capturing performances with ease.
‘I was very impressed with the looks of the Venue Live Sound console,’ continued Mr De Silva. ‘Coming from a studio background, the usability and workflow has a lot of hands on practicality towards the mix engineer in the studio that can be incorporated to live. Analogue has a distinct timbre that gives the overall sound to be warm and present but the Venue SC48 still offers the clarity and low noise floor that analogue consoles tend to give out much more off. Also the outboard amps and processors needed to operate an analogue desk are cut down so much with the introduction of digital.
‘The Venue SC48 has increased our arsenal of gear that we teach our students to be familiar with and increases the awareness that we take our education quite seriously at SAE,’ concluded Mr De Silva. ‘Keeping our equipment and gear up-to-date is the key to be in-line with industry standards. There is a growing awareness with audio production, not limited to studio work but with live production and this sets the level in which we can stand out from the rest assuring our students that they will acquire state of the art equipment and knowledge when they graduate from our campus.’
‘I feel that the venue console was a very suitable choice as a teaching tool in SAE,’ added MediaCast’s Simon Short. ‘Its virtual sound check functions mean that multi-track recordings can be played through the mixer, allowing a great hands on live mixing experience for students to be able to practice on. The SC48 provides a very familiar workflow considering it is a digital console, and is great at bridging the gap for more software based studio engineers.’