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D-Show Profile is Right on the Button
Paddy Dunning’s popular Temple Bar Music Centre, situated in Dublin’s stylish downtown area, has re-emerged as The Button Factory following a major renovation that cost in excess of €1 million.
With its grand reopening last month, the venue now boasts a new layout, expanded capacity (to 750), and a state-of-the-art infrastructure, which includes a Digidesign Venue D-Show Profile console supplied by local distributors Big Bear Sound.
Although the four-storey Curved Street facility was purpose-built as a live music venue around 12 years ago, the building was traditionally surrounded by button factories (hence the name). Today it houses a myriad of recording facilities. Dunning’s original Temple Lane Studios is joined by The Sound Training Centre, which offers sound engineering courses on the third floor, while a rehearsal studio is housed down in the basement.
Traditionally an analogue venue, The Button Factory’s move into the digital domain gathered pace once two outside investors—ex-Rí-Rá co-owner Eoin Foyle and POD Concerts boss John Reynolds—were brought in. Reynolds, who also promotes the Electric Picnic festival and operates the mighty Tripod venue in Dublin, had purchased two large-format Digidesign Venue D-Show consoles for Tripod, and suggested a Venue system for The Button Factory.
David Best, Button Factory’s resident engineer, had seen the potential for streamlining the FOH workflow and sending live multitracks to various Pro Tools|HD-equipped facilities, but hadn’t determined which console to choose and how to integrate it at FOH. Although Best had long been a strictly analogue man, the reality of the revised control layout meant that the real-estate requirement would need to be rethought, as the mix position would share the booth with the lighting operator.
The more compact digital approach afforded the obvious choice, and the decision came down to a choice between two consoles. With Reynolds advocating the Venue route, the decision for Best was really a no-brainer, following his experience at last year’s Montreux Jazz Festival, where he found himself piloting a Venue D-Show for the first time.
“I was mixing Royseven, the support band to Bryan Adams, and it took me virtually no time to get my head around it,” Best remembers. “It also left me with plenty of time to mark up my show while Bryan Adams was sound-checking.”
By the time Reynolds had voted in favour of the Venue console, Best had already downloaded the system’s D-Show 2.5 software onto his laptop, and was heading off to Big Bear Sound for training with a show he had saved on his USB key. “I thought, it can’t be that simple, but it was,” he recalls. In fact, Best says that all visiting sound engineers who’ve since mixed on the club’s console have also found it to be “that simple” to use.
In addition to the standard Venue D-Show Profile system, which consists of the console, 48-input Stage Rack, and FOH Rack, Big Bear Sound also supplied The Button Factory with an HDx Pro Tools interface card, the VenuePack Pro 2 bundle, which offers an extra DSP Mix Engine card and additional plug-ins, and a 250-foot DigiSnake cable to connect the two racks.
Once Best started mixing on the D-Show Profile, any bias he had towards analogue quickly evaporated. “By the second gig, I had been completely converted,” he admits. “The desk is really intuitive and laid out so much better than other digital desks I have used—everything is much faster to find. The EQ is really responsive and sounds great; with most other digital desks it sounds plastic. And there is a delay section on each channel.”
Of the console’s inherent effects and TDM plug-ins, Best favours the small but popular palette of gates, reverbs, and compression as well as delay and occasionally pitch shift. Typically, he uses Digidesign ReVibe and Reverb One, Line 6 Echo Farm, and Voce Chorus Vibrato effects. He also diligently saves shows of bands who are likely to return to the club, eliminating the need for sound checks.
In the future, Best plans to offer full multitrack recording, which is made easy with the Venue system’s direct integration with Pro Tools systems. He plans to install an Apple Mac Pro-based Digidesign Pro Tools|HD 2 Accel system at front of house, and supplement the audio with a three-camera PPU (portable production unit) and vision mixer.
“With several Pro Tools|HD facilities in the vicinity, including two other studios and a mastering suite, there is ample opportunity to attach a Pro Tools|HD system,” he notes.
In picture: David Best at the Digidesign Venue and the interior showing the mix position and stage.
13th December 2007
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