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D-SHOW PROFILE IS RIGHT ON THE BUTTON
Paddy Dunning’s popular Temple Bar Music Centre, situated in Dublin’s stylish downtown area, has re-emerged as The Button Factory following a major overhaul costing in excess of €1 million.
When it reopened last month the popular live venue boasted a new layout, expanded capacity (to 750) and a state-of-the-art technology infrastructure — including a Digidesign D-Show Profile FOH mixing desk, supplied by local distributors Big Bear Sound.
Although traditionally an analogue house, the move into the digital domain gathered pace once two outside investors, ex-Rí-Rá co-owner Eoin Foyle and POD Concerts boss John Reynolds, were brought in. The latter already operates the mighty Tripod in the city as well as promoting the Electric Picnic, and he had been responsible for purchasing the first two Digidesign VENUE installation desks when he specified them for Tripod.
Although the four-storey facility was purpose-built as a live music venue around 12 years ago Temple Bar’s Curved Street building was traditionally surrounded by button factories (hence the name). But today it houses a myriad of recording facilities. Paddy Dunning’s original Temple Lane Studios is joined by The Sound Training Centre, offering sound engineering courses up on the third floor, while a rehearsal studio exists down in the basement. Dunning was also responsible for setting up Grouse Lodge, Ireland’s first residential studio.
David Best can already see the future potential for streamlining a workflow from FOH, sending live multitracks to the various Pro Tools HD-equipped facilities. But first the process of choosing and integrating the console at FOH had to be completed.
Although Best was hitherto a strictly analogue man the reality of the revised control layout meant that the real-estate requirement would need to be rethought, as the mix position would share the booth with the lighting op.
The more compact digital approach afforded the obvious choice — and the decision came down to a choice between two consoles. With John Reynolds advocating the Digidesign route, the decision for the Button Factory’s resident engineer was also a no-brainer following his experience at last year’s Montreux Jazz Festival, where he found himself piloting the VENUE D-Show for the first time.
“I was mixing Royseven, the support band to Bryan Adams, and it took me virtually no time to get my head round it,” he remembers. “It also left me with plenty of time to mark up my show while Bryan Adams was sound checking.”
By the time he voted in favour of Digidesign David Best had already downloaded the V2.5 software onto his laptop. The sound engineer headed off to Big Bear Sound for training with a show already saved on his USB key. I thought ‘It can’t be that simple?’ But it was.”
And he says that all visiting sound engineers to date are also finding it “that simple” — and are loving their experience of the Digidesign platform.
In addition to the standard Digidesign D-Show Profile system, of control surface, 48-input/8-output Stage rack and FOH rack, Big Bear Sound also supplied the Button Factory with an HDx recording interface card and a VENUEPack Pro 2.0 bundle with DSP card and additional plug-ins. Connectivity between FOH and stage is provided by the 250ft Digital Snake Cable.
Any bias David Best may have had towards analogue quickly evaporated. “By the second gig I had been completely converted. The desk is really intuitive and laid out so much better than other digital desks I have used — everything is much faster to find.
“The EQ is really responsive and sounds great — with most other digital desks it sounds plastic — and there is a delay section on each channel.”
Of the console’s inherent FX and TDM plug-ins David Best favours the small but popular palette of gates, reverbs and compression — with delay and occasionally pitch shift. Typically he will enable Digidesign ReVibe and Reverb One, Line 6 Echo Farm and Voce Chorus Vibrato FX — diligently saving shows of bands likely to return, in order to reduce the necessity of sound-checking.
The future should see him offering full multitrack recording, with an Apple MacPro running a Digidesign HD2 Accel system at front of house. This would be supplemented by a three-camera PPU and vision mixer.
“With several HD facilities in the vicinity, including two other studios and a mastering suite, there is ample opportunity to attach a Pro Tools HD system,” he notes.
Aside from installing a world-class FOH system, including an L’Acoustics ARCS line array, the venue has gone to great lengths to insulate the building, applying the necessary acoustic panelling, and heavy drapes. “We have added a balcony with with fixed bench seating which acts as a sound diffuser and there’s also thiick pile carpets with acoustic underlay,” says Best. “In fact the room is unbelievably dead compared with its old RT60 measurement, which was about 2.5.”
The balcony, like the rest of the interior design, was the responsibility of local concept company, Design Farm. While the old balcony has now doubled in size and provides fixed seating for 90, downstairs the dividing wall between the venue and the bar has been removed to provide customers — and middle-ranking bands on the touring circuit — with a fantastic new infrastructure.
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