Ten Day Navratri Music Festival Features India’s First Soundcraft Vi6™ Mixing Console

Showcasing Soundcraft’s growing influence in the burgeoning India pro audio market, SOUND.COM coordinated efforts with Reliance Big Music for a 10-day concert series that relied on an extensive Harman audio system featuring a Soundcraft Vi6 digital mixing console. The 96-channel Vi6 exceeded expectations, assuring further installations in the future.

The versatility of the Vi6 allowed the engineers to simply slot the additional DSP (Mix engine) card into the console, upgrade the software to V3.0 and start mixing immediately. There was no threat of sacrificing I/O on the desk as it is fully loaded to accept audio signals from all the input and output channels from the local rack as well as the stage box, simultaneously. The individual channels are managed in a small footprint while the fiber optic lines protect users from any disruptive interference.

Sunil Karanjikar, Systems/Mix Engineer for the Navratri Festival stated, “I’m extremely happy with the sound of the console, which is the most important aspect of providing the audience with a great experience. The Vistonics and Fiber Optics provided a full and sensational sound that resembled an analog desk. Overall, I felt completely at home with the Vi6 and I didn’t even reference the user manual,” Karanjikar added. “At SOUND.COM, we’re generally fanatical about loudspeaker engineering, and we gravitated towards the Vi6 console because it offers the pedigree of those ‘great-sounding British consoles’ that we could never afford in the past.”

Warren D’Souza, Founder and Owner of SOUND.COM, proudly mentions, “The decision to feature the Vi6 is a classic example of the team providing exemplary audio services to our customers, and instead of skimping on technical prowess and equipment, we exceeded our customer’s expectations.” D’Souza continues, “I also appreciate the efforts of the backstage team, including Ashok Giri and Ranjit Singh. The quality of the crew on stage is of the utmost importance, and we have to appreciate the contribution Ashok Giri has made to SOUND.COM. He’s toured a million miles, representing us all across the country, and it was only fitting that when we were recognized for our efforts, it was him who went up on stage to accept the laurels.”

The install consisted of 18 VERTEC® VT4889 full-size line array elements (nine per side), left-center-right hangs of four VT4880 arrayable subwoofers each, plus two VT4887 compact line array elements for front fill, all powered by Crown IT8000 amplification. The key focus was to not compromise on the trim lengths for good coverage and headroom to provide unprecedented power in the venue. The specific genre of music contains a lot of mid-frequency energy produced from the instruments as well as the vocals, and the R.B.I. (Radiation Boundary Integrator) of the VerTec mids produced a clear and full sound.

More information and a free download of the Virtual Vi software is available at www.soundcraftdigital.com.