Housing a concert hall, large theatre and studio in the south of Holland, Theaters Tilburg has recently replaced its analogue sound set-up with two DiGiCo SD9 and three SD11 mixing consoles, along with their associated D-Racks.

‘With our focus on the future, we decided to make the swap to go fully digital in all our rooms,’ says Theater Tilburg’s Pernel van Herpt. ‘Looking at our future programming and bookings – which were heading more towards music shows, and the fact that we have to work with our in-house crew more and more – we felt the need for digital systems with a quick and flexible workflow.

‘After performing intensive comparisons, we concluded that the DiGiCo SD Series was the perfect choice for us because of its sound quality and intuitive, easy-to-use interface.’

Supplied by DiGiCo’s Dutch distributor TM Audio, these were installed during the summer break from productions, when a large dressing room was also temporarily converted into a DiGiCo training centre, with TM Audio hosting the sessions. Following these, the more experienced engineers connected a number of multitracks to the console set-ups, helping the inexperienced engineers to gain a better working knowledge of the systems.

‘The D-Racks are fitted with AES/EBU output cards to provide end-to-end digital signal flow, starting with the 96kHz, 24-bit AD converters behind the preamps in the rack, and ending in the power amplifiers behind the DA converters,’ explains TM’s Jaap Pronk. ‘All set-ups can be used individually or in combinations with rack sharing when using the DiGiCo Little Red boxes, which we also supplied, and benefit from DiGiCo’s unique Gain Tracking system.

‘A DiGiCo UB Madi USB2 audio interface was chosen for virtual soundcheck and multitrack recordings, which became a very welcome tool during the first days of in-house training.’

‘Following the training sessions, we integrated the consoles in the theatre’s home network, both wired and wireless,’ Pronk says. ‘We also supplied laptops with touchscreens that all had pre-installed offline software, which has many advantages. For example, during a musical rehearsal the director can use a laptop that is synced with the console to implement all the technical notes from the script into the automation of the mixer, while the sound engineer does his audio run through. This means there are no more A4 sheets, as the engineer sees his technical script on screen.

‘Another welcome function for a theatre combination such as this is the Template function, which has write-protected sessions that can be stored for individual rooms or production types.’