Dedicated to producing a mix of classic and contemporary plays, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis was founded in 1963 with the ambition of to setting a national standard for excellence in the field and provide Minnesota with a new cultural resource. The venue houses three stages, production facilities, classrooms and public spaces. As part of its efforts to remain at the forefront of the industry, the theatre recently upgraded its audio production capabilities with three new Stagetec Avatus Series audio mixing consoles.
ASK Sales’ Stagetec specialist Arnie Toshner coordinated with Stagetec’s Chris Stevens to smooth the transition. ‘Working closely with Paul Estby, the Guthrie Theater’s Production Sound Engineer, we installed three new Stagetec Avatus D consoles – two 36-channel configurations and one 12-channel configuration,’ Toshner reports. ‘These new boards replaced the theatre’s Stagetec Aurus consoles, which provided 19 years of robust, trouble-free performance.’
The Guthrie Theater’s console changeover occurred quickly, with all systems up and operational on day three. Of particular note, the theatre was able to retain an existing Stagetec Nexus Audio Router – saving time and money in the process. ‘The transition to the new consoles was handled efficiently, and the preparation shown by the engineering staff at Stagetec’s Berlin home office complex was exceptional,’ Estby says.
With removable metering displays that not only provide a clear view and reduce the console’s overall surface height bur can be mounted to suit the environment, such as on a wall or a swivel arm, the Avatus D console’s central controller is equipped with standard TCP/IP interfaces that are used to link to the control surface. This allows a remote network connection to be used, enabling access to the console via a web browser or control software (Apple Macintosh) without any special hardware. When linked to a Nexus network, users can access almost unlimited resources using audio inputs and outputs of any format.
Estby says a combination of robust performance attributes, flexible design maximise the manner in which the new consoles can be deployed, and reports a positive experience with the Nexus router for input/output management.
‘The flexibility of Nexus allowed us to do updates and to implement the new Avatus systems into our existing infrastructure,’ he says. ‘We were able to transfer our building-wide – three theatre spaces, three rehearsal rooms and recording studio – routing into the new Nexus Star which minimised the amount of downtime we experienced. Familiarity with our former Aurus consoles also was beneficial with the new Avatus surfaces.’
