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Marquee Supply Barbican with New Midas Heritage 2000
The Barbican Concert Hall has taken delivery of a new Midas Heritage 2000 front-of-house desk (and wing), purchased and commissioned by premier Telex UK dealers, Marquee Audio, who will provide their traditional comprehensive support.
Configured as a 36 + 4 stereo channel input desk, the mixing console maintains continuity with a brand that the leading London concert venue has favoured for many years. The facility originally ran a pair of XL200’s, and while one has made way for the new Heritage, the second remains in the projection booth.
“Should we need further channel capacity at front of house we relocate our Midas Venice, which we use to mix concerts in the foyer,” explains sound technician, Jasja van Andel.
The purchase of a new FOH sound desk was part of a larger capital project that also includes the replacement of the main speaker systems. The delivery of this project involved not only Simon Wingfield, head of planning and production and Neil Woolley, technical supervisor, but the whole sound team.
“While the purchasing decision is very much a team effort it was decided from the outset that we would go for a Heritage, since engineers consider it to be industry-standard and it appears on most riders,” continued Jasja. “It was purely a question of which model we opted for.”
The Barbican sound team, which also includes Maurice Adamson, favoured the Heritage 2000 because as a receiving house they often do not know the requirements of incoming shows … until the day.
The 2000 is thus the perfect solution. “It is a quick, versatile desk — and aux-wise and routing-wise it requires little programming in advance. The auxes are both fast and accessible, and and sonically it sounds great.”
Furthermore, says Jas, the decision became axiomatic since with a number of contemporary bands now appearing on the Barbican programme, a genuine FOH desk was required.
“What we really liked about the Heritage 2000 was the preamps, and the fact that it had 0dB inserts on all the channels, subgroups and auxes as well as a lot of matrix outputs. The direct output switchable pre and post fade is also very handy and we also like the VCA’s and mutes.”
But the desk’s use will not be confined to music performance alone, as Maurice Adamson explained. “Flexibility is the name of the game with this desk; since we host a lot of AGM’s and conferences we are able to gain more auxes — which is useful, since these events are always looking to gain more feeds from somewhere.”
In picture: Jasja van Andel at the Barbican’s new Heritage 2000
23rd November 2005
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