PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: The Philadelphia Orchestra has chosen to install
an Audient ASP8024 analog console in its new home in Verizon Hall. The
36-input, in-line recording desk is the centerpiece of the audio control
room at the 2,547-seat concert hall, which was designed specifically for the
orchestra and is located within the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts,
the internationally acclaimed performing arts complex in the heart of
Philadelphia.
The Audient was chosen after a lengthy evaluation of analog and digital
mixing console options side-by-side in the control room. "Whilst we were
seduced by the recall and ease-of-use of the digital solutions, the sound of
the Audient was a clear winner," offers Simon Woods, a former producer
at
Abbey Road Studios in London, and until recently, The Philadelphia
Orchestra's vice president of artistic planning and operations.
"It was open, natural, three-dimensional, and gloriously warm," continues Woods,
who is now president and CEO of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. "You felt
a remarkable sense of space in the hall, and it just felt real rather than processed.
It was a huge quantum leap of quality over the digital desks.
An Audient 32-input ASP 8024 console was installed in
Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
George Blood, of George Blood Audio and the Safe Sound Archives, and the Philadelphia
Orchestra's longtime recording engineer, is overseeing technical design for
the new control room, with acoustical design provided by Doug Jones. Blood and
Woods co-produced the Philadelphia Orchestra's first in-house release, a three-disc
set of orchestral works by Robert Schumann, which attracted two Grammy nominations
last year.
The control room infrastructure design criteria included the installation of
high quality, yet realistically priced, equipment. This would allow the
recording of the orchestra for in-house use in any digital format via
high-end, minimally miked classical techniques. Plus it gives third party
users the perfect console for production of non-classical performances and
broadcasts.
As Blood notes, the digital console option had to be pursued. "We were
particularly interested, not only for the forward-looking technology in a
digital desk but also the functionality - recall, and, for our uses, the
possibility to apply time delay in the channels. There were things that we
liked about all of the desks, but at the end of each day we kept coming back
to the Audient. And as this is the first major equipment purchase the
orchestra has made in twenty years, we needed to be absolutely certain about
performance and value."
The ASP8024 is a full-featured, 24-track console that has
been designed using the absolute shortest signal paths throughout, resulting
in the highest possible signal quality at the outputs. That design philosophy
dovetailed nicely with Blood's design, which incorporates Schoeps microphones,
Jensen Twin Servo 990 mic preamps, and Prism AD2 converters.
"We've got remote mic pres and the cable cut to length ahead of the mic
pres," he reveals. To then install 36 channels of expensive A/D converters
on a digital console would have been prohibitive, he observes. "The digital
desks are an excellent value for the package, but what it takes to get from
analog to digital is very expensive - and to do it across a whole desk was
prohibitive."
Utilizing the highest quality analog console with an extremely high-end input
signal path will ensure that the new analog equipment will remain compatible
with future digital formats, as Woods points out. "Combined with superb mic
amps and A/D converters, we have a superb sound source that can drive any digital
format - 20-bit, 24-bit, 44.1k, 48k, 96k, and so on. This mixer should have
extraordinary longevity as digital formats grow and change around it."
An Audient 32-input ASP 8024 console was installed in
Verizon Hall, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Located at Broad and Spruce Streets on the Avenue of the Arts
in Philadelphia, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts incorporates two
performance spaces, the Philadelphia Orchestra's Verizon Hall, home to Peter
Nero and the Philly Pops, and the 650-seat Perelman Theater, for chamber music
concerts. The complex is named in honor of Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist
Sidney Kimmel, who has served on the board of directors of The Philadelphia
Orchestra since 1995.
The ATI Group is the parent company of Audio Toys Incorporated, API Audio,
Uptown Automation and the newly formed ATI Group Distribution Division,
which now distributes the full line of Audient products including the newly
introduced Aztec console. Audio Toys manufactures the industry leading
Paragon II monitor console, the Paragon II production console and associated
rack mount gear. Uptown Automation manufactures and installs moving fader
and mute automation for analog mixing consoles. API remains the leader in
analog recording gear, such as the famed Legacy console, the TEC
award-winning 7600 channel strip, and the acclaimed 2500 stereo bus
compressor.
Audiotoys
Classical Music Forum
