The compact desk, which was previewed at last month's PLASA Show in London, was used on two special showcase product launches 24 hours apart. While Joe Campbell was working with one on monitors for Chris Rea at London's Bush Hall, the following night across town Chris Madden was preparing for the Sugababes arena tour next spring with a media show at the 100 Club to announce the trio's new greatest hits package - Overloaded: The Singles Collection.Backed by a live band, the Sugababes' 80-minute show in front of an invited audience was filmed by a video production company for a forthcoming DVD, and Madden synced the audio to video (using the Digidesign SYNC I/O), multi-tracking the set using the Pro Tools| HD rig provided by Digidesign resellers, Marquee Audio.
Aside from a 20-minute induction on the Digidesign stand at PLASA the next time Chris Madden saw Profile was when the same desk arrived at the 100 Club just before the show.
Profile is compatible with all existing Venue hardware and software and operates on the same D-Show control software and operating system.Therefore, navigating his way round the board's ergonomics was never likely to prove difficult for an experienced Venue driver.
Playing out through HK's compact Contour Array powered line array system, Madden managed to balance the backing textures of drums, guitar and two keyboards to perfection. "As this D-Show Profile console was a preproduction unit, Digidesign staff stayed around to make sure everything worked to perfection and it did! I took the show file that I had saved from the D-Show and loaded it into Profile from my memory stick, and it recognised everything immediately."
D-Show Profile is expected to ship in November 2006.
(Jim Evans)
