A theater I've had a play done at is sorely in need of a new audio board, and I'm wondering what others are using. I know Yamaha and Soundcraft for sure have some options, but there must be others. They do mostly small but one big production a year. What are you using? Do you like it? Hate it? Why?
We, a receptive theatre with about 500 different shows/year in 3 auditoria, kicked out all the advanced soundboards. When a show needs a specific board, we rent it. The only soundboards that are left are some simple analogue boards max. 12 in/ 4 out, for the activities in our lobby. Advantage: you always have the board the show needs, no big investments, it is very transparant where the money goes, no storage problems. Disadvantage: you need to do good preparations per show, if you miss it here, you have a challange.
I think you need to make some decisions on need. Analog or digital? Can the people that are running it learn to use digital? As someone that doesn't do a lot of sound and had to learn by doing, I really like the console I have now which is analog. It's a Soundcraft GB-8 with 32 channels. It might be kind of a large frame if you are a small theatre with not much room, although it is a bit more compact than the Yamaha PM-1800 32 frame I used to have.
C. Todd Birdsong
Oct 6, 2010
Michiel Sipman
Jun 6, 2011
Al Sundby
Jun 20, 2011