Democracy Now! chief broadcast engineer, Nick Marcilio, explains why he opted for an InnovaSON console over anything else. "There were a number of reasons," he remarked. "I'd seen the board side by side with a number of other digital console brands at a recent AES show, and was struck by the versatility of the design. Whereas the majority of competitive consoles seemed as if they were trying to emulate analogue control surfaces, the InnovaSON is clearly rooted in the digital domain. The fact that any fader can be assigned to any function; input, output, VCA whatever, really demonstrates the versatility of the control surface.
This leads me onto the second issue, which is price. I feel that the InnovaSON product is extremely reasonably priced for what you get - in fact, it does more than what some of the more expensive broadcast consoles do in terms of routing flexibility and configuration, and on top of all that, the sonic quality is excellent."
Democracy Now! is about to move premises, having outgrown its current location. Nick Marcilio observed that the minimal InnovaSON infrastructure and small footprint would simplify the move. "In fact, we made the jump from an analogue to a digital board during our move to the temporary studio. That transition already reduced costs for us as we didn't have to invest in any infrastructure to support what had become an obsolete console. When we move to the new place, all we have to do is drop the console into our new control room. All the microphones come from the Stage Box, which is easy, and the outboard gear - the little that we have left, because the Sy48s A/D and D/A conversion capacity has enabled us to reduce the amount of external processing we use - is tied in via a patch bay. It'll be a piece of cake."
(Jim Evans)
