Seattle’s Famous Benaroya Hall Upgrades Sound System With Soundcraft Vi6™

The ease of operation of the Soundcraft Vi6 is being showcased at Seattle’s famous Benaroya Hall. Home of the Seattle Symphony, the 2,500-seat S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium is Seattle’s first facility designed exclusively for symphonic music performances and Soundcraft consoles provide outstanding sound quality and versatility for every performance. Celebrating 10 years as one of the nation’s premier venues for live symphonic music, Benaroya Hall sound engineers chose to upgrade their sound reinforcement system with three Soundcraft Vi Series digital mixing consoles – two Vi6’s and a Vi4 - for the 550-seat Recital Hall.

Soundcraft products are no strangers to the Benaroya Hall and the introduction of the Vi6 was the logical next step in upgrading the quality of the sound system. The hall previously featured analog boards by Soundcraft and the effects of the digital board were instantly felt as the sound quality in the hall was improved tremendously. Audio Director for the Benaroya Hall, Tom Akoury, states, “Installing the Vi6 was an unbelievable upgrade in sound quality and the sound engineers immediately commented on the intuitiveness and versatility of the Vi6. We were able to install the console without any difficulties and within 15 minutes we were very comfortable mixing on the board.”

The Soundcraft Vi6 console is designed to the reliability standards of Studer Vista and has the intuitive Vistonics II interface allowing engineers to control the board exactly where they are looking. “The board is designed with engineers in mind,” continued Akoury. “With other consoles, engineers are sidetracked by paging through multiple books and sometimes losing focus or train of thought. With the Vi6, engineers have the ability to save shows and operate the board without any books. The intuitiveness of the board and all of its capabilities has made my job easier and the overall ease of operation is truly a lifesaver.”

The diversity of the Benaroya Hall’s performances requires sound engineers to quickly and efficiently prepare for multiple concerts in the same day ranging from symphony’s to rock and roll. Akoury adds, “We have a lot of turnarounds in concerts and the timing of everything has to be perfect. With the Vi6 we are able to preprogram the console for the second show, which reduces the sound check time tremendously. We were really killing ourselves for the past seven years without the Vi6.”

The Vi6 is loaded with upgrades and boasts an impressive input-to-mix capacity of 64, or 96 channels mapped out on 32 motorized faders. These can be assigned to 32 outputs, plus a stereo and mono mix, that can be combined in any group, aux and matrix buses. The Vi6 is also HiQnet™ enabled allowing the desk to become a control point for a comprehensive Harman Pro Group system at the Benaroya Hall that includes AKG C414 microphones and JBL VERTEC® speakers powered by Crown Macro-Tech amplifiers.