Ashly in the mix for Pueblo’s DeHerrera
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The company’s highest profile work includes concerts for up to 5,000 people (Foghat, Jimmy Eat World, War, etc.) and its regular gig running AVL for the three free stages of Colorado’s State Fair. But DeHerrera Event Services also has plenty of bread-and-butter work running modest AVL systems at weddings, graduation ceremonies, and the like.
Because its large-format consoles are overkill on those smaller jobs, company owner Wayne DeHerrera recently picked up two of Ashly Audio’s new digiMIX24 digital mixers, which pack all of the features of his larger consoles into a 14” x 20”, 17lb frame using a clever workflow that, in DeHerrera’s words, “has anyone I’ve shown it to up and running confidently after just five minutes”.
“We do a lot of meetings, small conferences, and celebrations,” DeHerrera explained. “We needed something that had all of the functionality, sound quality, and reliability of our larger consoles, but until the Ashly digiMIX24 came along, smaller consoles always came up short on at least one of those requirements. We’ve been using Ashly equalizers and processors for years, and they’ve always been reliable, high-quality pieces of equipment.”
Based on the frequency and overlap of those smaller-sized jobs and the mixer’s affordability, DeHerrera purchased two Ashly digiMIX24s.
DeHerrera’s team had its first opportunity to use the new mixer at a Dan and Shay concert. The show required all the channels of the company’s largest large-format console, so the new Ashly digiMIX24 filled in to cover Playing With Fire, a local Rock band that opened the show.
Next, the company used both digiMIX24s to provide sound for 14 area graduation ceremonies and a handful of other events, such as an MMA cage fight. Although power never dropped during any of those events, DeHerrera said he was glad the digiMIX24 always remembers its current configuration in the event of a brown out or blown circuit breaker.
“When I first saw the cut-sheet for the Ashly digiMIX24, I was sceptical of its single moving fader,” DeHerrera said. “But after I got my hands on it, I realised that it becomes whatever I need at the moment. The workflow on the touchscreen is so well thought out that it takes noticeably fewer moves to accomplish a task compared to our larger consoles, and the fader is there to make the moves intuitive and easy.”
As he prepares to cover the five stages of Pueblo’s annual Chili & Frijoles Festival, an event that draws over 100,000 people to downtown Pueblo, DeHerrera is going to get two more Ashly digiMIX24s. That way, the company can use one of its large consoles on the main stage and a digiMIX24 each on the four smaller stages.
(Jim Evans)
