DiGiCo Releases V685 Software

DiGiCo has released V685, the latest software upgrade for its range of digital mixing consoles. The company’s proprietary Stealth Digital Processing allows for the new features for live, broadcast and theatre applications.

V685 includes:

• Increased Buss count for the SD9 from 16 to 24 Flexi Busses
• SD11i/B input channel count increased from 32 to 40 Flexi Channels
• Support for Optocore DD4MR, DD2FR, X6R and DD32R devices in audio I/O
• Any SD5, SD8, SD9, SD10 and SD11 running Waves 9.5 will now have 32 stereo Waves racks
• The availability of Aux Sends on Groups in the live and theatre versions
• Support for the D-Rack AES input card and the addition of the D2 Rack as an I/O device

For the theatre, the Relative Faders in Cue Groups is now a Macro command, Auxs, Groups and Matrix channels can now be added to channel sets, and Channel Cues now defaults to showing names.

And for broadcast applications, Backstop PFL is now functional on output busses and there is s new option on the SD7B and SD10B for Speaker Mute to do Dim.

“Waves is happy to provide the increasing number of DiGiCo SoundGrid MultiRack users, the added benefit of doubling their rack capacity,” comments Mick Olesh, Waves EVP Sales & Marketing. “Increasing the number of racks provides DiGiCo SoundGrid users the capability of running 32 racks of Waves and 3rd party plugins to their workflow.”

“It was always our intention to ensure that our SD range of consoles was a future proof as we could possibly make it,” adds DiGiCo managing director James Gordon. “We believe we have the most comprehensive range of consoles currently on the market that deliver exactly what our customers need and want, whatever the changing demands of their use requires. Being able to deliver such substantial upgrades again and again means that they should stay that way.”

V685 is being provided free of charge for an introductory period.

South African Churches Turn to DiGiCo
Pretoria has recently seen the construction of one of South Africa’s largest churches. The recently constructed 6500-seater addition to the international CRC Christian Churches has set a new standard in Worship Houses and boasts a number of DiGiCo consoles.

The team of professionals and consultants tasked by Pastor AT Boshoff to ensure that the church was supplied and equipped with only the best on offer spent their time ensuring they did not disappoint.

When it came down to which consoles to use, the church turned to the trusted advice of an engineer in the US, Armando Fullwood of Waves. His console of recommendation for what the Church wanted to achieve was DiGiCo.

Local distributor Tadco supplied and installed an SD Ten at Front of House, an SD8 for monitors and a further SD8 for the broadcast studio, which broadcasts live to the many other CRC Churches around the world.

“DiGiCo’s intuitive layout made training the Churches students and Volunteers a breeze,” says Tadco’s Perry Elias.

Henry Underhay, the church’s head of audio, was extremely impressed with the systems.

“The versatility of these consoles is a real benefit for me,” he says. “I come from a live rock music background, where things need to happen creatively on the fly and being able to setup the mixer in the most comfortable layout for an engineer has brought me tremendous joy. Everything you feel that you may require can literally be at your fingertips once you have done the initial setup.

“The setup itself is also very logical and easy to get around. Often things can change at the last second and there’s no time to do another sound check. The fact that you can access settings for, let’s say, a vocal channel from a previous show into your current show has also been a real blessing.

“The sound of these consoles is sonically very transparent with very little (if any) unwanted colouration. This allows for a beautiful and responsive mix. In other words when you make a change to anything, the results are what you expect them to be.

“Like most live sound engineers, I tend to be quite paranoid even in the safest situations. The guys at DiGiCo seem to know this and all the failsafes, like redundant power supplies or seperate reset capabilities of the processing and audio units, has really put me at ease. I need to mention though that I have not yet had to use any of these measures; it’s just nice to know they’re there.”