With its grand reopening last month, the venue now boasts a new layout, expanded capacity (to 750), and a state-of-the-art infrastructure, which includes a Digidesign VENUE D-Show Profile console supplied by local distributors Big Bear Sound.
Although the four-storey Curved Street facility was purpose-built as a live music venue around 12 years ago, the building was traditionally surrounded by button factories (hence the name). Today it houses a myriad of recording facilities. Dunning's original Temple Lane Studios is joined by The Sound Training Centre, which offers sound engineering courses on the third floor, while a rehearsal studio is housed down in the basement.
Traditionally an analogue venue, The Button Factory's move into the digital domain gathered pace once two outside investors - ex-Rí-Rá co-owner Eoin Foyle and POD Concerts boss John Reynolds - were brought in. Reynolds, who also promotes the Electric Picnic festival and operates the mighty Tripod venue in Dublin, had purchased two large-format Digidesign VENUE D-Show consoles for Tripod, and suggested a VENUE system for The Button Factory.
David Best, Button Factory's resident engineer, had seen the potential for streamlining the FOH workflow and sending live multi-tracks to various Pro Tools/HD-equipped facilities, but hadn't determined which console to choose and how to integrate it at FOH. Although Best had long been a strictly analogue man, the reality of the revised control layout meant that the real-estate requirement would need to be rethought, as the mix position would share the booth with the lighting operator.
"I was mixing Royseven, the support band to Bryan Adams, and it took me virtually no time to get my head around it," Best remembers. "It also left me with plenty of time to mark up my show while Bryan Adams was sound-checking."
By the time Reynolds had voted in favour of the VENUE console, Best had already downloaded the system's D-Show 2.5 software onto his laptop, and was heading off to Big Bear Sound for training with a show he had saved on his USB key. "I thought, it can't be that simple, but it was," he recalls. In fact, Best says that all visiting sound engineers who've since mixed on the club's console have also found it to be "that simple" to use.
(Jim Evans)
