"When you want to attract the best crew in a tight labour market, you need to give them the best tools to work with, so they feel good about the quality of show they're delivering," said Sydney Director Vicken Hekimian. "So they work harder to make our clients happy, which is really important when you're the underdog, the number two AV company."
As part of this strategy, Scene Change takes a democratic approach to major capital expenditure. All the senior crew are given a chance to test drive prospective new purchases. The search for new mixers was a long one. Many digital desks were judged to be not flexible enough to handle the last-minute nature of large corporate events. The Soundcraft Si1 emerged the victor.
The key selling point was the quality of the onboard control gear. External effects racks take up time and space that is often not available for tight-turnaround corporate shows, so a digital desk was the logical choice.
"There's no questioning the quality of the onboard gear on the Si1," said Hekimian. "dbx equalisation, Lexicon effects, and BSS processing are all proven products that we know and trust. It passed all the tests we could throw at it."
(Jim Evans)
