Soundcraft in the Venue at “In the Venue”
Apr 12, 2007 12:00 AM
Salt Lake City’s In The Venue, a three-floor, 1600-capacity live music club formerly known as Bricks, is quickly gaining a reputation among high-profile touring alternative, punk, and indie acts as ‘the place to play’ when crossing Utah. Certainly one of the primary reasons for this buzz can be attributed to the club’s new Harman Pro concert sound system, which is anchored by two Soundcraft consoles: a 48-channel Series Five at front-of-house and 48-channel SM12 running monitors.
Local contractor/dealer Sonolux installed the system under the direction of its principal, Rolando ‘Rolo’ Casos, who dually serves as In The Venue’s head engineer. In addition to integrating the Soundcraft desks, Casos also flew twin six-box arrays of JBL Vertec VT4887 enclosures with six subs per side groundstacked below, all powered by nine Crown CDi 1000 and 2000 power amplifiers. Various BSS and dbx processing further rounds out the new pro audio equipment complement.
According to Casos, “Salt Lake is somewhat of a ‘B’ market, but it’s in the middle of all the touring routes, so everybody stops here. By putting a Series Five in at In The Venue, as well as all of the other Harman gear, we are able to satisfy the rider requirements of ‘A’ level bands that are playing in arenas and theatres everywhere else. As a result, we’ve been able to host some very popular acts in a much more intimate setting—and a number of them have been so impressed with the room that they’ve returned for more dates.”
Casos isn’t kidding when he says ‘intimate;’ although the club can accommodate up to 1600 patrons, the room is considerably wider than it is deep, with the longest throw for the loudspeakers being a mere 32ft. “Many of the bands that come in are used to performing up on a really tall stage where there’s a barricade ten feet out,” he says. “But this room is totally different—the audience is up close and personal, but the sound is still every bit as good as a big professional touring rig—so we have a lot of really amazing shows in here because of the energy and vibe.”
Prior to putting the Series Five and SM12 in, In The Venue had been using a Soundcraft K2 desk on FOH and smaller SM12 on monitors. Both of those boards have since been relegated to serve the club’s smaller performance stage located in a separate 500-capacity room at the front of the building. “We obviously liked the SM12 very much, seeing that we got another one that was larger,” Casos says. “We also liked the K2 but knew that we had to step up to a larger and more fully featured console if we wanted to attract higher-tier acts. The Series Five is perfect for the club because it gives us all of the features of the nicest ‘A’ level boards without being as expensive; it’s the best deal for the money in large-format analog boards right now and has been for a long time. And talk about features—high and low cut, excellent EQ, solid preamps with A and B inputs, good routing—it has everything we need with no sacrifices. The engineers coming through are always really, really happy with the desk.”
Over the past few months, In The Venue has hosted performances from a myriad of hip and edgy artists, including The Shins, Bowling For Soup, Imogen Heap, We Are Scientists, Yo La Tengo, Cursive, The Early November, Sparta, The Strokes, and many others. Upcoming acts on the books include the likes of The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, The Ataris, Brand New, Anti-Flag, Kottonmouth Kings, Saves The Day, Relient K, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, Animal Collective and more.
