The opening of the £3.2m Monkton Senior School Music Centre in the UK brings ‘unrivalled facilities’ to the school’s pupils, as well as being commercially available as a rehearsal and performance space.

Central to its technical installion is a Roland M-300 Digital Console and S-1608 Digital Snake. Harmony Audio Visual chose the system as a solution for the multi-room element of an extravagant audio and visual production to mark the addition of the centre to one of the UK’s most prestigious schools.

More than 1,000 guests attended the opening weekend and were treated to a varied programme of music, from a Battle of the Bands competition on Friday evening, to a clarinet recital, a steel pan band and a 200 strong choir on Saturday – all showcasing the talents of current and former pupils of the school, including musician and songwriter Richard Stilgoe.

Harmony Audio Visual took charge of the event production which involved a live stage setup and FOH in the main auditorium and relaying the performances to the overflow audience in the chapel 100m away. The challenge was to consistently relay both the sound and vision without sync issues, time delay or any discernible loss of quality. By choosing the M-300 and S-1608 Digital Snake for the audio relay, both the console and the S-1608 could be connected using Cat5 – saving time on the set-up, providing a discrete cable solution and keeping costs down. Two cameras were used in the main stage area to capture the visuals and Kramer VGA-Cat5 converters were used to relay the visual element to the chapel, converting from the camera output to Cat5 then back to VGA to project to the screen. This simple Cat5 solution delivered high-quality sound and visuals for the audience in the chapel without any synchronisation issues.

‘The sound quality and ease of use were great and we were able to pick up the menu options (of the M-300) quickly and from a financial point of view, the M-300 made sense. Roland will be Harmony’s digital desk of choice for the years to come’ commented Chris Irwin, Director of Harmony Audio Visual.

The M-300 has 32 mixing channels, LCR outputs, aux aux buses and four matrices. Built in REAC allows flexible system expansion and as part of the V-Mixing System including Digital Snakes, Personal Mixers and Multi Channel Recording, the M-300 provides a scalable solution for medium sized venues and is also lightweight and transportable. The S-1608 Digital Snake System is a small format audio snake solution for providing high-quality audio signal without high-frequency losses or physical bulk of an analogue snake.

More: www.rolandsg.co.uk