Providing sound reinforcement services in the central coast area of California, Mike Bacciarini’s Audio Flair opened for business in 2004 with an Allen & Heath GL2200 analogue mixer. More recently, he has purchased a Qu-24 digital mixer with an AR2412 AudioRack.
‘Allen & Heath makes great sounding, reliable gear and with the Qu-24, I don’t need to carry around a 120-ft, multichannel analogue snake and a signal-processing rack,’ Bacciarini says. ‘I can do most shows with the Qu-24 and an amp rack. Everything’s onboard the mixer except my CD player.’
Audio Flair serves events ranging from concerts and fund-raisers to festivals, civic events and worship services. Bacciarini often preloads shows into the Qu-24 based on a stage plot and mic list, and he saves Qu-24 scenes to use as starting points for future events with repeat clients and venues. Each scene stores the FOH and monitor mixes, and DSP effects used on individual channels or on the mix as a whole.
‘The Qu-24’s built-in effects are great,’ he reports. ‘I don’t use a separate FOH rack any more. And the AR2412 puts all of my inputs on the stage so I just need a Cat5 cable.’
On request, Bacciarini records events with the Qu-24’s multitrack Qu-Drive using the mixer’s softkeys as start/stop/record buttons. He also makes good use of the mixer’s Qu-Pad app for remote control. ‘It’s very cool,’ he says. ‘I can use my iPad to mix from anywhere in the house and even walk up on stage to adjust the monitors.
‘Sonically and artistically, the Qu-24 is great,’ he reflects. ‘It’s got plenty of headroom and there’s no ‘digital sound’. Coming from an analogue background, the Qu is impressive and very usable, and the Allen & Heath training videos are great. It couldn’t be any easier than this.’
