Ministry of Sound upgrades Soundcraft setup

The Ministry of Sound nightclub in London has carried out a streamlining of its Harman Professional tools and distribution network, including an upgrade to the Soundcraft Vi3000 and Realtime Rack plug-in engine.

The upgrades were supplied by Sound Technology, Harman’s UK and Ireland distributor.

“We had seen great service from our Si2 console — but we’ve been looking to upgrade for a while now to something with more screen real estate, and a platform which touring engineers are more comfortable with,” said MoS production manager, Chris Thoms. “The Vi3000 is a great trade off for its size and features — and of course the sound quality, steeped in Studer technology, is stunning.”

The Realtime Rack plug-in engine connects directly to the Vi3000’s built-in MADI interface, and MoS has installed a proprietary BSS BLU-Link card in the console, allowing a 32 x 32 digital interface between the console and their BSS Soundweb London audio network, also part of the Harman Professional portfolio, and also recently upgraded to Dante-compatible BLU-806 processing.

“With a BLU-806 for the Dante break-in and BLU-Link card for the Vi3000 it allows us to free up a lot of our outputs and bypass many of the traditional digital to analogue conversion process,” Thoms commented.

This integration also accommodates the installation of a Dolby Atmos immersive sound system, following the recent announcements that the world famous London nightclub would be bringing Atmos to its dancefloors and Martin Audio would be facilitating the new technology with 16 CDD15 (Coaxial Differential Dispersion) installation speakers. This will be used for selective events hosted by the club in which a line-up of top electronic artists will transform their music into a multidimensional immersive sound experience.

Ben Todd, who heads up the project team at Sound Technology, added, “With the new console and DSP we have been able to expand their existing system in a straight-forward and elegant manner. This provides MoS the option to control the Dolby Atmos multipoint surround via the desk or the installed DSP backbone. The result is a hugely powerful and flexible interface for Chris and the team to dream up yet more innovative ways to push the boundaries.”

In a further integration, Soundcraft’s VM2 Vistonics Microphone Monitoring – a feature common to all Vi consoles – enables all channels of the club’s AKG DMS 700 system digital wireless microphone system to be monitored and controlled directly from the Vi3000 console. Thoms concluded, “We could not be happier with our new console, and the upgrades to our infrastructure. The support we have received from Sound Technology throughout the process has been outstanding as always.”

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https://www.soundtech.co.uk/