The Choir of Man Features DiGiCo on World Tour; Company Flaunts A164D Wall LCD, A168D Stage for 4REA4 at ISE 2020:

DiGiCo was recently featured at The Choir of Man world tour. In addition, DiGiCo is showing off two new I/O Racks, the A164D Wall LCD and A168D Stage, for its acclaimed 4REA4 processing engine for networked audio in installations, at this year’s ISE show in Amsterdam.

The Choir of Man
Fresh from the stages of their world tour, including the preeminent Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Choir of Man is a feel-good Musical currently on extended tour around Australia. A stage-show from the creative minds of Nic Doodson and Andrew Kay, the show combines nine performers and occasional live instruments, along with a technical back-end up to the task of delivering quality audio worthy of international theater.

Working behind the scenes to help bring The Choir of Man to life is Gideon Cozens, the show’s Front of House engineer on behalf of Optical Audio Productions. Gideon says that to help him achieve the workflow and sonic quality required for each performance, he relies on DiGiCo’s SD12 digital mixing console.

DiGiCo’s SD12 console is a multi-application powerhouse designed to provide optimum performance in the engineering and capture of live audio. With its exceptional Super FPGA technology and powerful onboard Core 2 software, the SD12 is capable of unrivalled I/O and control. The console’s wealth of connectivity can be further enhanced with a variety of smart DMI interface options, including MADI-B, MADI-C, Aviom, and Dante.

For this tour, Gideon decided to take an SD12 fitted with a Dante card, and a DiGiCo D2-Rack. Together with a couple of Mac minis, this setup provides a small but powerful system for engineering live audio and delivering playback in a tour-ready package.

From the stage, the SD12 receives inputs from a set of radio mics for the performers, as well as a few FX mics for capturing live tap dancing. Where playback is concerned, the Dante card allows Gideon to stream audio in from both a main and backup Mac mini running sound cue software. The Dante capabilities of the SD12 also mean Gideon does not need any local inputs or external sound cards as part of the setup, which reduces space and clutter significantly. “I love the SD12 as it is compact yet robust, and everything I need on it I can access quickly and easily,” he says.

With the aid of Optical Audio Productions and the power of DiGiCo, The Choir of Man has become a hit of the international music and theatre scene, appearing at the Adelaide Fringe Festival and running a sell-out season at the Sydney Opera House.

ISE 2020
Both Racks bring all the connectivity of the original A164 Wall LCD and A168 Stage, but with the additional advantage of Dante connectivity.

“With 4REA4, we enabled audio over IP, but until now it had to be on a dedicated network,” explains DiGiCo Technical Sales Manager, Tim Shaxson. “Adding Dante connectivity not only adds the flexibility and familiarity of the Dante network protocol, but also means that consultants and integrators can take advantage of existing network infrastructure to drop I/O for their 4REA4 anywhere on the network.”

The A164D Wall LCD is a 16 input 4 output I/O Expander that uses the Dante network protocol to provide fixed, additional I/O anywhere on a network and is designed for wall or floor mounting. It comes with 16 Mic Preamps on XLR inputs with Phantom Power status LEDs and four XLR Line Outs with direct preamp control from the 4REA4 controller software. It can run at both 48K and 96k sample rates and it is AES67 compatible. Primary and secondary Dante ports come with locking EtherCON connectors and can run in both redundant and switched mode. All LCD labels are dimmable and can be customised using Dante controller software.

The A168D Stage is a portable 16 input 8 output I/O Expander, again using the Dante network protocol to provide additional I/O anywhere on a network. It comes with 16 mic preamps on XLR inputs with Phantom Power status LEDs and 8 XLR line outputs with direct preamp control from the 4REA4 controller software. It runs at 48k and 96k and is AES67 compatible. Primary and secondary ports again come with locking EtherCON connectors and can run in redundant or switched mode.