TELEMARK, Norway — A Soundcraft Si Compact 24 digital console has been purchased by the Vatnar Leirsted youth camp in Telemark, Norway.
Owned by the Pentecostal churches of Telemark, camps are arranged several times a year, each attended by between 80-110 youths, while the camp facilities are also rented out to churches and other organisations around the year. The Vatnar church itself has 110 seats and each summer a Bible camp takes place in a tent with 350-400 seats.
As part of a systematic facility upgrade to accommodate the expanding capacity, it was Vatnar Leirsted's technical adviser Bjørn Ivar Haugdal who recommended the Soundcraft console to the board, for use on their new campus. This would enable them to stage youth concerts, worship and small bands with improved technical facilities and the board was happy to adopt this over the analogue alternatives it reviewed. The order was placed with local dealer, Belco A/S.
“The Si Compact will be used as a FOH and monitor desk in the new tent we have purchased for our bible camp, which will be capable of 1,300 seats,” Bjørn Ivar confirmed. “Being portable, it will also be used in some of our other venues.”
The Si Compact was the most suitable desk for three reasons, Ivar continued. “Ease of use, ease of use and ease of use! It offered an easy transition from analogue. Several other digital consoles in this price range had similar features but had a significantly more difficult user interface.”
Other factors in shaping his decision were the extremely good preamps, GEQ on all outputs and the high buss count. “And comparing the footprint with similarly priced analogue desks, with all the outboard gear necessary, it became a no-brainer,” Ivar said. “The minute we opened the box containing the console, we felt at home.”
Aside from four stereo Lexicon processors, the Si Compact 24 features 24 recallable mic pre amps plus four stereo returns, AES-in and 64 input option slot with a capacity to combine up to 40 of these inputs to mix; each input is fully equipped with compressors, gates, parametric EQ, high pass filter and delay.
With all the technicians either self-taught or working on a voluntary basis, the console ultimately had to be highly intuitive. “The beauty of this console is that any 15-year-old kid can operate it at a basic level after 20 minutes of instruction,” Ivar noted. “Give them a couple of hours and they would be able to take advantage of the more advanced features too.”
With Lexicon effects on board, all the volunteers that have been given the opportunity to operate the console have expressed excitement over how easy this console is to use, confirms Bjørn Ivar. “And those with previous experience on digital consoles are even more excited!”
HARMAN (www.harman.com) designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment solutions for the automotive, consumer and professional markets – supported by 15 leading brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon® and Mark Levinson®. The Company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 20 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems. HARMAN has a workforce of about 12,000 people across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and reported sales of $3.8 billion for the twelve months ending June 30, 2011.