Dividing its affection between Miami Heat basketball games and concerts from the likes of Shakira and Lady Gaga, the AmericanAirlines Arena is Miami’s top sporting and entertainment venue. And it is now also home to an Innovason Eclipse digital mixing console, as part of an A/V upgrade which has moved its sound system into the digital domain.
‘We already had an Sy48 that we were looking to upgrade with new cards and so on, but then we visited InfoComm and saw the new Eclipse,’ says Miami Heat director of broadcast services, David Vickery. ‘Kevin Madden gave us a demo, and after that, there was no going back…’
While its primary use is the audio for The Miami Heat’s games – including all of the performance elements pre- and post-game, and at half-time and during time-outs – it also serves corporate events held at the arena. ‘An American NBA basketball game is a big production, you know,’ Vickery says. ‘It really was time for an upgrade to keep in step with our newly refurbished and outfitted video control room, which is state-of-the-art HD. Now that the Eclipse is in place, we can say the same of our digital audio control room too.’
‘The signal path is entirely digital throughout, and the audio performance of the board is excellent,’ agress Jorge Arronte, the Arena Sound & Matrix Manager. ‘I’m also pleased with the FX card – having all of those extra EQs is great. In fact, we have actually eliminated a lot of outboard gear as a result, including a whole load of processers that were dedicated exclusively to the basket mics. Now everything just comes straight into the Eclipse where we have all the processing we need, and more. It keeps things clean and simple, it sounds good, and suddenly we have a lot more space in the control room.
‘I also think the SmartPanel is fantastic,’ he coninues. ‘It gives you double the desk you thought you had, and you can configure it any way you want. We have used it to add outputs (among other things), which the operating engineer has really appreciated. He has two people talking into his ear at any one time, and they usually both want something different! The SmartPanel has enabled him to configure what the needs to keep everyone happy, and it’s all at his fingertips – he doesn’t have to flip through banks of faders or scroll through pages – it’s all right there, and he loves that.’
The Mars 64-track integrated recording system is also finding favour: ‘This is a great bonus for us, and very timely,’ Arronte says. ‘We’re planning on working a lot more within the corporate events market in the future, and the Mars facility will enable us to record those events at the push of a button. Previously, the only way we could achieve this was to hire an additional technician and equipment just to manage the recording, which is a significant extra expense for the client. Now we can make that service much more accessible to the customer as it’s incredibly easy to do and won’t cost us a dime. However, it might make all the difference to the client as they will be able to walk away with a recording of their show in an easy-to-manipulate, high quality digital format. Everyone wins.’
More: www.innovason.com
