One of Denmark’s top live performance venues, the Radio Koncerthuset hosts symphony concerts, chamber music, choral, jazz, rock and pop events in the near-perfect acoustics of its four halls. Already equipped with three DiGiCo D5 mixing desks, a new SD7 – supplied by DiGiCo’s Danish distributor Soundware – raises the curtain on more ambitious productions.
The Copenhagen venue has been a focus of Denmark’s quest to become one of the leading lights in Scandinavian music, the 1,800-capacity main hall staging some of the city’s highest profile concerts, with the smaller three allowing a wide range of new, groundbreaking performances. ‘Although the D5s have been performing very well, we needed a console with a lot more outputs for in-ear monitors, Aviom systems and Roland M-48 personal mixers, as well as FX,’ says DR audio engineer Robert Røhr. ‘We had no reason to change platform within DR and the SD7 is already a familiar console with many sound engineers in Denmark.’
The new console’s first job was a January awards event, which featured eight live rock bands during a 90-minute live-to-air television show. ‘All the bands were touring at the time, and they all came with their own FOH and monitor engineers,’ Røhr says. ‘The monitor console was a rented SD8 and the continuity console was one of the in-house D5s. It went very smoothly, the extent of the SD7’s inputs meant that it easily coped with the number of bands. The engineers were familiar with DiGiCo, so we had no problems.’
Directly after this was the seven show run of live television shows for the Danish X Factor. Here Robert manned the SD7, doing FOH, IEMs, M-48s and Aviom all on the same console. ‘We had two of the new 192kHz SD-Racks (running at 48kHz) with 112 in and 112 outs to the console,’ he adds. ‘Twelve stereo channels of in-ears, 16 stereo channels plus talkback including microphones with Optogates for the band and a 16 mono channel Aviom system for the symphony orchestra.
‘The PA, front fills and side fills were fed from the SD7 matrix and we used a lot of onboard FX - using the SD7 meant that we didn’t have to bring in any outboard. It’s a complicated show and using snapshots is a must, but the SD7 meant that we could do everything we needed without having to compromise or hire in any additional equipment.’
With all of DR’s DiGiCo consoles used throughout the Koncerthuset halls as well as in its television studios, the SD7 has brought a new level of flexibility to a range of the broadcaster’s productions. ‘The SD7 has been a real asset. I love the dynamic EQ and the multiband compressor. The onboard effects are really good and it has brought many benefits,’ says Rohr.
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