The Ministry of Sound London has carried out an elegant streamlining of its Harman Professional tools and distribution network, including an upgrade to the Soundcraft Vi3000 and Realtime Rack plug-in engine. These were supplied by Sound Technology, Harman Professional’s UK and Ireland distributor.
“We had seen great service from our Si2 console — but we've been looking to upgrade for a while now to something with more screen real estate, and a platform which touring engineers are more comfortable with,” stated MoS production manager, Chris Thoms. “The Vi3000 is a great trade off for its size and features — and of course the sound quality, steeped in Studer technology, is stunning.”
The Realtime Rack plug-in engine connects directly to the Vi3000’s built-in MADI interface, and MoS has installed a proprietary BSS BLU-Link card in the console, allowing a 32 x 32 digital interface between the console and their BSS Soundweb London audio network, also part of the Harman Professional portfolio, and also recently upgraded to Dante-compatible BLU-806 processing.
“With a BLU-806 for the Dante break-in and BLU-Link card for the Vi3000 it allows us to free up a lot of our outputs and bypass many of the traditional digital to analogue conversion process,” says Thoms.
This integration also accommodates the installation of a Dolby Atmos immersive sound system. This will be used for selective events hosted by the club in which a line-up of top electronic artists will transform their music into a multidimensional immersive sound experience with this system.
Ben Todd, who heads up the project team at Sound Technology, adds, “With the new console and DSP we have been able to expand their existing system in a straight-forward and elegant manner. This provides MoS the option to control the Dolby Atmos multipoint surround via the desk or the installed DSP backbone. The result is a hugely powerful and flexible interface for Chris and the team to dream up yet more innovative ways to push the boundaries”
In a further integration, Soundcraft’s VM2 Vistonics Microphone Monitoring – a feature common to all Vi consoles – enables all channels of the club’s AKG DMS 700 system digital wireless microphone system to be monitored and controlled directly from the Vi3000 console.
In closing, Chris Thoms states, “We could not be happier with our new console, and the upgrades to our infrastructure. The support we have received from Sound Technology throughout the process has been outstanding as always.”
For more information please contact Sound Technology Ltd on 01462 480000 or visit www.soundtech.co.uk/professional-audio
