Richard Waterhouse, who owns and runs DB Audio in partnership with his brother, Steve Waterhouse, comments, "Our primary concern in running the house system at the Electric Ballroom has always been to achieve the best quality of sound we can. This aim, coupled with using only top quality experienced engineers, means that for visiting artists, engineers and promoters we regularly exceed their expectations of the venue."
As touring engineers have brought their systems into the Electric Ballroom to link-up with the venue's Martin Audio Wavefront rig, DB Audio have gained valuable hands-on experience using all of the leading brands of digital console. "The one which stood out from the rest in terms of sound quality was Midas", explains Waterhouse, "and when we saw increasing numbers of engineers touring with their own PRO2 and PRO1 consoles, we felt the time was now right to invest in our own."
Richard and Steve got in touch with LMC Audio to discuss the current market options. "We took them through the next generation of systems coming through from the major brands and narrowed the choice down to MIDAS PRO series", explains Will Hinkly, technical field sales at LMC Audio London. "Even though these are established systems within the market, they are proven in the field in terms of sound quality, flexibility and their scalability, catering to almost every eventuality. It was important to Richard and Steve that the system was industry standard and would tick the 'rider friendly' box in order to accommodate all of the high profile touring artists coming into the Electric Ballroom."
Deciding to opt for separate front of house and monitor consoles, the Waterhouses knew which Midas PRO Series desk would serve their application best, "The Midas PRO series embodies scalability with the PRO3 upgradeable to PRO6 and PRO9 through the addition of extra processing cards", says Richard. "For us, the logical entry point was PRO6, upgrading our old 48 channel analogue system to 64 channels digital.
"Our philosophy has always been that the quality of sound on stage is just as important as front of house, so the decision to invest in two PRO6 consoles was easy." Other factors which played a part in their choice were the ease of integrating a multi channel JoeCo Black Box recording system via a Klark Teknik DN9650 network bridge, and the simple convenience of being able to stand in front of their stage monitors and adjust 6 band parametric EQ using an iPad.
DB Audio's first gig using the new system was with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club on 3 February and the increase in sound quality far exceeded their expectations. The day after this gig, they were requested to provide an 'open sound check' by Prince's management for a gig the following night. On arrival, Steve found that Prince's engineer wanted to run monitors, in-ears and FOH from the front of house console. "Running monitors from FOH would have been an almost impossible task using our old system but with the new PRO6 it amounted to a simple re-patch," he adds.
(Jim Evans)