El Rey Theater: Big Ben for Live Sound
Posted on: August 12, 2008
Posted in: Big Ben, Products, Video
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House engineer at LA’s El Rey Theatre, Brian Haught tells why Apogee’s Big Ben has improved the theater’s digital console setup for bigger lows, clearer highs, and a wider stereo image. Once installing Big Ben as the master clock for the front of house PM-5D, the theater never looked back and now a show never runs without it.
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Video Transcript
“I’m Brian Haught, and Front Of House at the El Rey Theatre here on Wilshire Blvd. Recent artists have included Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, and LCD Soundsystem. In addition to this lovely place I also do monitors for Love and Rockets. We just got done doing Coachella and we rely on this digital stuff to facilitate the multiple things that we’re doing, but what your device has been doing is basically making it better, smoother, and more present so that it doesn’t sound as digital.”
“We had a few shows before we got the piece and it just seemed that when you started mixing everything a lot of the clarity got smudged and smeary in the middle, and now most of the mixes we can get so detailed you can hear every little thing and every little perspective. When we installed this desk here at the El Rey Theatre we did not have the Big Ben, it was on back order, so we went ahead and put the desk in, ran a few shows, and there was a band called Ossmutatos from Brazil, they were a 17 piece band and we used it without that.”
“I noticed just the other day when we did Babasonics, another South American act,that the clarity was dramatic because as you stack more and more instruments the board can only do so much being that it is digital, there is a realm of clarity that’s awesome but the clock source gives it an extra width. When you start putting everything in perspective you can still hear the clarity and definition and to me it adds a lot more sparkle. It’s less glassy but still brilliant which is hard to do. This desk has a reputation for being a bit cold but Apogee makes a really wonderful device to warm it up.”