Arguably Brussels’ most important live music venue, Ancienne Belgique is a multi-application space spanning several floors with two live rooms and a recording studio. It is often the first stop on the touring calendar for international acts, as well as a hotspot for-up-and coming local bands. Keeping pace with this remit, the venue has invested in two DiGiCo mixing consoles in recent months to ensure it is as flexible as possible – first, an SD5 at monitors and, most recently, an SD12 which is now the venue’s go-to FOH board.
Ancienne Belgique opened its doors in 1994 after a massive two-year renovation. Today, it boasts a superbly kitted out 2,000-capacity main hall; the club, which is a great sounding 280-capacity room dedicated to bands on the circuit as well as the Brussels local scene; and a recording studio.
‘All of our crew are capable of doing everything, and what’s nice is that we are also interchangeable between the main hall and the club,’ says Technical Manager, Mark Vrebos. ‘For example, a rock ’n’ roll show might be all-standing and full to the brim, but if we have jazz music we might choose to make it all seated, or half-and-half. We can also bring the capacity of the main hall down from 2,000 to 800 if needed. It’s basically a very versatile space. Then we have the club, which is a fantastic place for local acts to showcase their talents.’
‘We knew we wouldn’t be able to use our good old analogue boards forever,’ he continues. ‘We keep them alive, and we still use them because it’s good to have both options. But it was getting more and more difficult, and we didn’t want to wait until it was too late to make a digital investment.
‘Today, we absolutely need digital. Sometimes we’re doing festivals with five bands on stage, all of them doing a soundcheck, so that is not going to work if we’re analogue. And the age of engineers is changing too, so we have found the demand for digital is way higher than it used to be at festivals and shows.’
In addition to the desks’ sound quality, it was the familiarity of the brand with travelling engineers that drew Ancienne Belgique to them: ‘In my experience, everyone knows a DiGiCo, so when they see one they’re happy and everyone knows at least the basics of how a DiGiCo works,’ Vrebos says. ‘I also really love the analogue channel strip feel – the whole ‘top-down’ thing. It stays with analogue logic, top to bottom, and that is extremely important to me. And then there’s the flexibility of the consoles – you can do anything on them and they’re so fast to navigate.’
The SD12 was chosen for its igh power, functionality and small footprint: ‘All DiGiCo desks have that reliability, but the fact that the SD12 is more recent, with newer technology, was very appealing. That was the idea behind investing in it,’ Vrebos says. ‘Also, the new 32-bit preamps are built into the SD12, which are incredible sounding; the noise floor is now so low, and you get a cleaner, better overall sonic, and a way cleaner signal to noise ratio, which is very important. And, of course, the small footprint makes them ideal.’
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