Chosen to handle football games and other major events around campus, Soundcraft’s Vi1 is getting good grades at the University of Delaware.

Looking for a new mixing desk to meet the growing needs of the University’s events, Joe Dombroski, Audio Engineering Technician and his colleagues at IT-University Media Services took a look at what the market had to offer and chose a Vi1 from New Jersey-based Total Video Products.

‘This board is perfect for University Media Services needs,’ says Dombroski. ‘It’s mostly used for entertainment during home football games and larger events around campus including commencements. I’ve worked with Soundcraft for a long time and I still have a Soundcraft Series 5 that I will never get rid of. It’s a classic.’

Dombroski finds the Vi1 an ideal fit for a number of reasons: ‘It has so much horsepower in a small footprint, it’s great to be able to run every channel through one Cat5 cable and know it can support it all,’ he says. ‘I believe that sonically the Vi Series are the best boards out there. They have warm sounding preamps that draw you in and the Lexicon reverbs make everything so smooth and natural. It’s surprising sometimes that it isn’t an analogue board, considering how good it sounds.’

Dombroski also values the desk’s preamps’ ability to reject noise (Common Mode Rejection Ratio): ‘So many boards have issues with grounding and interference,’ he says. ‘They are quiet in the studio or on the bench but they light up with noise in the real world. I’ve never had a buzz or any sort of noise come out of the console. The number-one challenge of live audio is keeping things quiet – as soon as you have even 5dB of extra noise it will degrade a mix.’

Themn there is its operation: ‘The Vistonics is wonderful, having the ability to scan across the board and see clearly what the settings are is great,’ he says. ‘It saves time and hassle instead of scrolling through many different menus. The multiple Madi cards are great and so convenient, giving so much flexibility to do a house mix or a multi-track mix, with endless options.

‘I’ve compared a lot of boards, and nothing is as good as the Vi1,’ he adds. ‘Even when paying for more expensive boards you won’t get the same audio quality that you do with Soundcraft.’

The University of Delaware relies on other Harman equipment, including JBL VRX and VP Series loudspeakers, along with BSS Audio processing.