Cumulus NYC Stage 17 mixes with Allen & Heath
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With its new audio systems, Stage 17 has hosted more than 100 live music broadcasts, interviews, fund raisers and other special events since March 2017 with celebrities like Oliver Stone, Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert and Gavin DeGraw.
Director of engineering Dan Hirschl says: “Our goal for Stage 17 was to convert a large conference room into a live performance studio for use by the multiple Cumulus stations here in New York for a variety of events.” Regarding the mixer choice for Stage 17, Hirschl says he had helped a colleague set up a Qu-16, a smaller Allen & Heath digital mixer. He noted, “It was very intuitive. I was able to figure it out and make it happen within 15 minutes. Also, it didn’t take a lot of work to get his mic sounding the way it should for broadcast. So, that experience was part of the reason we chose the GLD-80s for Stage 17. And I wanted the GLD’s routing ability and expansion options.”
During events, WPLJ engineers make good use of the GLD-80’s digital features. “We’ve had days when there were multiple artists on the stage and we were able to uses scenes to go seamlessly from show to show and that’s been really good for us,” said Hirschl.
Dante cards in the two GLD-80s feed a split from the FOH mixer to the broadcast mixer in a separate studio. “With the GLD-80s, everybody who has worked at FOH knows how the console works and can easily shift gears to the broadcast mix. That’s really helpful,” said Hirschl.
(Jim Evans)
