DiGiCo’s S31 hits bullseye at Target Centre
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Target Centre is now also home to a DiGiCo S31 console at front of house, installed there last fall by Windy Shores Sound. Its arrival concludes an extended sound system upgrade that began five years ago with the installation of an L-Acoustics Kara PA system. As is often the case with city-owned facilities, the arena has the usual municipal bureaucratic issues around budgets, and it took some time for other elements of the venue’s audio to catch up.
“They upgraded the PA system but much of the infrastructure around it was left in place,” recalls Matt Guzy, vice president of sales & engineering at Windy Shores Sound. “Herbie Woodruff, who was their house technician, crew chief, and sound engineer at the time, had to work with an almost-20-year-old console that, like most of the rest of the infrastructure and cabling, was still analogue and increasingly unreliable. At one point, Herbie said, ‘It’s time’ - and it was. We recommended the DiGiCo S31. It has the I/O, the power, and the processing needed for a major venue like Target Centre.”
The new 48-channel S31, which offers 31 physical faders and three 10-inch multitouch screens, plus FPGA technology, is fitted with a DMI-Dante interface card and accompanied by a DiGiCo D-Rack with 32 microphone inputs, eight line outputs, and eight more optional modular outputs that can be selected as either analog or AES. The desk now serves as the hub of the venue’s audio, with Windy Shores Sound extending the small Dante network already in place there to the broadcast dock and the venue’s stage box.
Chris Benson, head of audio for Target Centre, says the addition of the S31 has made substantial differences in the venue’s audio workflow.
