In the UK, the company will draw on the combined experience of Andrew Bruce and Duncan Bell of Autograph and Nigel Olliff, co-founder of BSS Audio. The US company will be led by Lew Mead, former owner of ProMix, a New York-based rental company whose association with Bruce and Autograph spans 15 years.
The company has secured the exclusive distribution rights in the US for the DiGiCo D5T, the theatre version of the D5 Live, and will be working closely with DiGiCo to promote the D5T in the UK and the rest of the world. Autograph A2D has been working on the development of the D5T with DiGiCo for almost a year, and the specialized software package, together witha dedicated add-on theatre operator's console, is set to be unveiled at AES in New York at the end of this week. The software package comprises a two-part enhancement consisting of dedicated 'theatre' software running on the console, as well as an external data-entry programme to assist and short-cut the programming of cues.
Autograph has been active in the field of mixer control software since 1989 when it commissioned its own designer and software writer, Matt McKenzie, to produce alternative software for the Cadac E-Type. Subsequent collaborations with both Soundcraft and Cadac has established Autograph as a specialist on the theatre console user interface.
At the D5 Live's launch at last year's PLASA show, Autograph director and sound designer Andrew Bruce recognized it as an ideal core for the first truly dedicated, assignable digital theatre console, a project into which he was keen to channel Autograph's previous development work. Fortunately, it transpired that DiGiCo was equally keen to move on to the next stage in the expansion of the D5 family.
"Since it can simultaneously display any 24 of its input channels in three banks of eight, it is entirely intuitive for any engineer brought up on analogue to grasp," says Bruce. "As a consequence, it goes a long way towards allaying the fears of operators for whom, hitherto, the predictable criticism of all assignable consoles has been that 99% of the console isalways hidden. It incorporates several features from previous projects that we'd been hoping would see the light of day again. We have been working with DiGiCo to merge in some of the more esoteric features that we have come to rely on in a theatre console. We all share a sense of real excitement at making a significant contribution to the digital mainstream in the theatre."
(Ruth Rossington)
