Headquartered near Portsmouth, but with more than half its contracts in the London area, PixelBright has swiftly built up a wide client-base by "providing a service rather than hiring out equipment", according to director Chris Sayce. "From the beginning, we saw demand for all areas of show production, so we diversified from lighting into sound, staging, draping, etc, but stuck to the same principle of being service-led rather than obsessing about technology."
Sayce and his partner Nick Allen made an early investment in the new digital audio systems introduced by Roland, notably the compact V-Mixing Series of consoles, which now handle all their control requirements and then the M-48 personal monitor mixers for stage sound. The company currently have M-400 and the rack-mountable M-380 desks in stock, the latter heavily in use for corporate work.
"For a 15-piece showband, we run 42 channels on the M-400, which is around maximum, and we've never had any trouble with it despite more than 150 gigs a year," says Chris Sayce. "Supplying two M-400 desks and M-48s for all the musicians, just one band contract will enable us to pay for a system within the year, which makes it a great investment.
"The Cat 5 digital snakes that are an integral part of the V-Mixing system design make these mixers so versatile, able to go from band use to corporate work in 5-star hotels really easily. Production managers love us when we don't run big ugly multicores through the room! And the footprint of the consoles themselves is so small; it suits all applications from the smaller live music venue to amateur theatre or hotel ballroom."
Roland Business Development Manager Simon Kenning describes PixelBright as "probably the stereotypical user of the V-Mixer package, demanding robust workhorse performance from a good feature set in a compact frame, they are focussed on achieving value for money, for their clients and for themselves."
(Jim Evans)
