UK - De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, East Sussex, is a venue with a strong sense of community. Training is at the heart of everything they do and Mat McQuade, technical stage manager, knew this meant they needed a DiGiCo console at the heart of their venue. Sited on the beachfront, De La Warr Pavilion boasts an impressive variety of music, comedy, and theatrical performances each year.
De La Warr Pavilion also supplies various early career programmes with work experience, creative careers sessions and apprenticeships all available to young people throughout the year. Training is just one part of what they do here, but it was a strong influence on the desk they chose, as McQuade explains.
“Visiting engineers expect a DiGiCo, and it became the norm for us to hire in SD12 consoles because they’re the standard that everyone’s looking for,” he says. “Our decision to purchase the SD12 came from what our clients expected, but also from our education programmes. It was important that the young people learnt on professional grade consoles, not entry level or obsolete desks.”
McQuade not only shares his knowledge on site through the various education programmes De La Warr Pavilion offers, he also teaches students at local colleges, giving them an insight into professional working practices. But it is not just the students that are benefiting from important training. “I organised for our whole audio team to get training at DiGiCo HQ,” McQuade expands. “We had training before and after the purchase, which was great. It’s really reassuring that DiGiCo has its doors open for the end user. Their approach is all about using the products, rather than feeling like a sales pitch.”
Once the SD12 was delivered, McQuade quickly discovered the benefits of using a DiGiCo console; and it is not just about the onboard features like multi-band compression available on every channel, or the fantastically useful dynamic EQ. The team have also discovered that the UB MADI port makes training even easier by allowing up to 48 channels of audio to be recorded straight into a laptop DAW of choice via USB 2.0.
“The SD12 is the first console we’ve had that offers the dynamic EQ feature. It opens a new way of EQ’ing someone’s guitar, for example, without compromising the sound of the instrument,” McQuade continues. “We’ve been using the UB MADI port to create virtual soundchecks, so it gives the learners a safe space to find their way around the console and the pressure is taken off them a bit. It come in handy for the young technicians I have, and I’m sure it will be valuable to the trainees, too.
“The benefit of the SD12 is that there’s so much functionality in the console, and it can even be expanded.”
