ST. CLOUD, FL — Veteran Disney sound engineer, Jay Bemiller, is in a “happy place” once again now that the city of St. Cloud, Florida has purchased an Allen & Heath digital console and mix rack. Bemiller went from mixing major productions on large, pricey analog boards for two decades to mixing 12 microphones on one channel.
More details from Allen & Heath (www.allen-heath.com):
“Every council member needed a different volume level so I ended up being a fader jockey during the meetings,” reminisces Bemiller. “What made things even more complicated was I also had to run audio for a live broadcast, streaming live webcast, feed for transcription, a digital file, and record to hard drive for DVD duplication out of the same box.”
St. Cloud is a forward thinking city and has been broadcasting their council meetings for over 20 years. When the new council chamber was built in 2003, a state-of-the-art video production studio was specified, however, sound and audio equipment were overlooked.
Bemiller joined the city as the coordinator of media services in 2004 and made the most of the archaic audio system for seven years. When he finally got the green light to upgrade the system, he began his search for a flexible and expandable sound system on a municipal budget. Design engineer and integrator, Dan Lee, at Signature Systems of Florida submitted the winning proposed design.
“The iLive T112 and iDR-32 mix rack fit into the application perfectly and we did not have to reroute any cables,” explains Lee. “They now have enhanced control on 32 inputs and 16 outs and the capability to expand their system when they are ready.”
As a sound engineer who spent his career working purely with the industry’s top analogue mixers, switching to the digital iLive turned out to be a walk in the park.
“The iLive is so intuitive that I was up and running after just one afternoon of instruction,” says Bemiller. “I was amazed at the depth and clarity I heard. It has very classic British EQ.”
Bemiller has already expanded the system by adding the Dante Network for a direct connection to his PC for multi-track recording. “I couldn’t be happier! The system is performing flawlessly,” exclaims Bemiller. “It gives us everything we could ask for at our price point.”
Well almost everything, Bemiller states with a chuckle. “There is one thing I would like to add to the iLive; a “Like” button so you can post your mix directly onto Facebook.”
