Engaged in a year-round tour across Scotland, Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (SNJO) is proving the value of the flexibility and small footprint of its recently purchased Roland M-480 live mixing console and R-1000 48-track recorder and two S-1608 Digital Snakes.
‘Before, I couldn’t even fit our mixer in the car, but with the Roland products I can get the whole setup in which makes life much easier,’ says Chief Engineer, Mark McKellen.
Glasgow-based hire company Sono Vie supplied the M-480, R-1000 and S-1608s on approval during October 2011, when they were put to the test at the Music Hall in Aberdeen, the Queens Hall in Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Conservatoire of Music in Glasgow. McKellen needed a simple to set up, portable system that could handle and record the the SNJO’s big band performances.
The R-1000 allowed the performances to be recorded with the minimum of fuss – all that was needed was to connect the R-1000 to the M-480 with a Cat5 cable – no conventional multi-core was required. ‘Being able to run Cat5 from A-to-B is just amazing because lugging around metres of multicore is a nightmare,’ McKellen comments. ‘It’s pretty revolutionary to be able to connect to the mixer so easily.’
Based on REAC (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication) the R-1000 can be used with any digital console with a Madi output via Roland’s S-Madi REAC Madi Bridge. Recording up to 48 tracks of 24-bit audio in BWF format, its removable hard drive allows file exchange with DAWs and allows approximately 20 hours of recording (44.1/48kHz) using a 500Gb disc drive. Multitrack playback (48 tracks of 24-bit audio via REAC) is also supported, while a marker function enables playback at any designated point. The R-1000 eliminates the bulk and noise typically associated with analogue snakes by replacing them with Cat5e/6 (Ethernet/LAN) cable.
The S-1608 Digital Snakes offer McKellen the flexibility he needs in configuring setups for different venues and performances with varying numbers of musicians – as when the orchestra toured with Peter Erskine playing the music of Weather Report, McKellen hired the Roland S-3208 from Sono Vie (extra 16 inputs to the S-1608).
‘For Peter Erskine I needed 41 channels for the big band arrangements and the S-3208 coped beautifully. The set-up I have now with the M-480, R-1000 and the Digital Snakes is just what I want – small footprint, easy to set up with loads of power and the features to do the job properly’.
Under the artistic direction of saxophonist legend Tommy Smith, the SNJO and its youth orchestra along with renowned visiting artists and soloists produce and present a continuous schedule of live performances which are recorded and then released for sale.
More: www.rolandsystemsgroup.co.uk
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