The Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Center recently installed Allen & Heath‘s GLD-112 to give their black-box theatre an audio upgrade.
The installation in the Long Center took place in the Debra and Kevin Rollins Studio Theatre, an adaptable venue with seating configurations for up to 229 patrons.
The Long Center itself has a variety of stages some of which can accommodate up to 2,442 guests.
Production supervisor, Blake Addyson, said the Allen & Heath GLD-112 he installed was put in an elevated booth about 15 to 20 feet off the stage floor.
“I really wanted our new console to have all the bells and whistles we needed so it could be fully utilized. Previously, we had a 40-channel analog (console), now it is time to go digital.”
According to Addyson, the Rollins Studio Theatre offers performers a flexible and unique environment for their productions.
“Allen & Heath develops products that not only help to upgrade our theatre sound system, but also provide an incredibly intuitive stress-free setup. Analog lines still run through the walls. We use the fan-out from our analog runs to patch out into an Allen & Heath AR2412 IO Rack, which is connected to the GLD-112 console via Allen & Heath’s dSNAKE protocol over Ethernet,” said Addyson.
The president and general manager of StageTech, Bill Mester, supplied the equipment installed in the Rollins Studio Theatre.
“The theatre has a lot of different users. Many of those users come in with their own operators. The flexibility of the GLD-112 allows experienced and non-experienced sound engineers to move around easily,” he said.
Addyson concurs with Mester. “I have a soft spot for the A&H brand. The GLD is made for faster mixing on the fly. There are plenty of layers, but you don’t have to scroll through everything, it is already in the right place so there’s no need to dig around – it’s my new favorite!” he concluded.