ARMAGH, Northern Ireland — Market Place Theatre & Arts Centre here has become one of the first venues to install Allen & Heath’s new GLD digital mixer. The new setup, which replaced an analog desk, includes a GLD-80 mixer plus an AR84 I/O rack in the control room and an AR2412 rack down on the stage floor.
The installation is part of a wider overhaul of the venue’s analogue audio infrastructure, which includes installing Cat-5 around the building to allow connection of an expander I/O rack to the GLD-80 mixer.
“We have a team of four technicians, and we all put forward names of desks we thought may be suitable, as well as consulting industry colleagues. We demoed a few desks before making our choice but the GLD came out on top for price, ease of use and input capacity. Moreover, it sounded the best in our comparison listening tests,” commented technician, Gary Bawden.
The venue hosts many different types of events, including theatre, music, dance, comedy and conferences, which the new GLD system will be managing.
“We’ve been really impressed with how easy it is to configure and move things around on the desk. Being able to color-code things is a neat feature. Also, the way this desk accesses auxiliaries is really good, almost a reverse logic of most other desks. The RTA is amazing and makes it so easy to squeak your monitors,” concluded Bawden.
