"Never before has so much power and versatility been accompanied by such an easily navigable, application-engineered user interface," Andy Trott, said today. "We are very pleased to expand the Vi Series and from our continuous discussions with members of the engineering community, we're confident that the 96-channel and 72-channel variants will resonate strongly with the market."
With its advanced Vistonics II user interface, the Soundcraft Vi Series provides engineers with intuitive operation via a touchscreen colour TFT monitor with integral rotary controls and switches mounted on the glass that provide engineers with a unique 'where you look is where you control' working philosophy.
The Vi Series also boasts an impressive input-to-mix capacity of 64 or 48 channels, mapped out on 32 or 24 motorized faders for the Vi6 and Vi4 respectively. These can be assigned to 32 or 24 outputs (plus a stereo and mono mix) that can be any combination of group and aux buses. Up to 16 matrix outputs can be configured from the pool of buses.
The Soundcraft Vi6 will now be available in 64 or 96 input models (the Vi4 having 48 or 72 inputs), while existing consoles can be upgraded with the purchase of an additional DSP card. The 96 channels to mix (for the Vi6) can then comprise the 64 stagebox mic/line inputs, the 16 line inputs on the local rack, and the eight stereo Lexicon effects returns. The 'additional' 32 inputs will be assigned to Fader Bank C on the surface.
Alternatively, a second stagebox can be added to bring in mic/line inputs from the stage to all 96 input channels. Through desk patching, the inputs can also encompass the 64 MADI channels, or 16 AES/EBU inputs. Further options are available for expanding the I/O to use additional remote stageboxes, or other audio formats.
Another significant feature of the V3.0 upgrade is that the Vi4 will now be able to access all 35 output busses, with the addition of eight busses fixed in 'Aux' mode, and this feature does not require the additional DSP card.
Other features of the new V3.0 software include sophisticated snapshot filtering, of particular interest to theatre users. In addition to the existing Isolate function where a channel may be isolated from snapshot recall, high-granularity filtering can now be applied both globally and on each snapshot, right down to individual parameter level (for example, a PAN setting or an individual Aux send). A completely revised Cue List Management suite now allows Apply Changes, where parameter changes can be applied to multiple snapshots, and cues can trigger or be triggered by MIDI or GPIO events, including MIDI Timecode. Harman's HiQnet Venue Recall function is integrated within this manager.
Other new features in V3.0 include finer adjustment of input and output delay trims, and enhanced metering on the master bay which includes Gain Reduction metering. It is also now possible to import and export channel labels from and to spreadsheet files using a USB key.
(Lee Baldock)
