Tremblay-en-France upgrades to Eclipse

The Odeon Theatre in Tremblay-en-France, situated north-east of Paris, has recently replaced its ageing digital desk in favour of an Eclipse GT digital console from Innovason. It is one of the first sales/installations to have been handled by Sennheiser France since it took over distribution of the Innovason brand at the end of 2012.

“It took me almost two years because it wasn’t the cheapest option available,” recalled Sylvian Fievet, Head of Sound at the Odeon Theatre. “But I managed to convince them [the municipality] in the end because I was able to demonstrate that the incredible sound quality and superior functionality of the Eclipse, especially once the GT version came out, compared to the slightly cheaper alternatives from the other main manufacturers far outweighed the difference in price.

“Apart from the sound quality, what I like best about the Eclipse is its configurability,” continued Fievet. “The ability to set up the console exactly the way you want according to the specific requirements of the show and/or the engineer is a huge advantage. You can determine the number of inputs, auxes, groups, VCAs, matrices etc., and then decide which faders or Smartpanel knobs you want to assign to those functions. Once it’s all set up, the console is then incredibly quick and easy to operate. There is no need to dig through menus or layers to find anything – it’s all at your fingertips enabling you to concentrate exclusively on the mix and manage your effects with astonishing rapidity. In fact, to make it easier for visiting engineers, Axel [Brisard] from Sennheiser France and I created and saved a basic configuration so that any engineer, whether he is familiar with the console or not, has access to all of his sources, destinations and key functions directly from the control surface.

“I also like the simple yet powerful routing functions as well as the EDIT function on the stereo faders in the SmartPanel enabling you to configure L/R parameters separately which is extremely well thought-out,” he went on. “Finally, the ability to control Neumann digital microphones directly from the Eclipse control surface is another huge plus. Even though I don’t yet have a Neumann DMI-8 interface, it’s clear that we will be investing in one in the near future. In short, the Eclipse GT is the ideal tool for us, and stands head and shoulders above anything else in a similar price range. Sennheiser France and Innovason have done a sterling job for us in terms of support and customer service, and I’m very grateful to everyone involved in the process.”

www.innovason.com