Abbey Road Live Here Now use Avid’s Venue Profile

Last month saw the Abbey Road Live Here Now team debuted its new Avid Venue Profile system as part of Faithless’ world tour.

The team is responsible for the high-end recording and distribution of concert CDs, which can be sold to fans directly after concerts.

The team have also worked with Eliza Doolittle at her recent London and Manchester shows, whereby they worked with DMZ Live, a location recording company who provide the necessary vehicles and equipment for such a task.

The recording of a live feed is a job, in which no room for error or mistakes can be afforded. It goes without saying that if an error occurs during a live recording, the damage to that night’s work is irreparable, Abbey Road Live Here Now head, MJ, elaborates: "We really do only have one shot at recording live concerts.

You can’t ask Faithless to repeat their last track because the feed broke up. So we needed a system that was 100 per cent reliable and produced brilliant sound. Sound quality is paramount when you’re selling a high-end product to fans. He then explained: "The nature of our work also takes us around the world so we needed the desk to be portable – the Venue Profile system fulfilled all these requirements and more."

To emphasise the efficiency of this system, the turnaround time for these CDs is only five minutes after the band leaves the stage. The speed of the turnaround is achieved by passing the MADI feed through an optical cable into the MADI Option card. This is subsequently inserted into the Venue desk. It is then mixed and mastered on the desk, prior to being passed onto real-time burners, which create the master CDs.

The deal was brokered by Avid reseller HD Pro Audio and Avid’s UK Live Sound Specialist, James Baker was on offer to provide advice and support to DMZ Live and the Abbey Road Live Here Now team throughout. MJ summarises: "Avid’s customer service team was excellent – a week after purchasing the desk we were up and running."