Audio Systems | News

Elizabethtown College Upgrades Audio System for Performance Center

• By Kanoe Namahoe
• 09/03/13

Elizabethtown College, a 1,900-student liberal arts college located in south central Pennsylvania, has upgraded its audio system in an effort to improve the quality of the events produced at the institution each year. The college hosts a number of events at its 844-seat performance center, including theater productions and musicals, worship and orchestra concerts, holiday events, and national chamber music acts.

The institution has installed Harman's Soundcraft Vi1 mixing console, a digital desk designed for small to mid-size venues. The console will help the campus's technical staff keep up with the growing number of events that the school is producing, according to Barry Fritz, technical operations director at the college.

"Each year the number of events and their complexity keeps increasing, so purchasing the Vi1 has been on the long-term to-do list for a while," Fritz said, in a prepared statement.

The Vi1, with compact form factor, comes with Vistonics II interface and "32 channels of analog input to 27 analog outputs," a feature that Fritz appreciates.

"Having the analog inputs is a nice feature, plus the stagebox we purchased bridges the gap between digital snake and analog," Fritz explained. "I also love always having the channel displays there. With our old console, we never had enough outputs; now I have more than I know what to do with!"

The digital desk also includes "16 motorized channel faders with fixed and user-definable layers, eight output/VCA faders and two master faders." The console also features customization and recallable settings.

"We do have a lot of groups that repeat throughout the year, so it’s nice to be able to recall the cues from our previously saved projects; having that flexibility makes it a lot easier," Fritz said.

Additional information about Elizabethtown College's new console can be found online.