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When the Venue D-Show console was first unveiled to me in May of 2005, artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Tom Petty, and John Mayer had been road-testing the console an entire year prior to the official announcement of Venue.  So to say that Venue was a new product when it was released would actually be a false statement.  Likewise to state that Venue was simply Pro Tools HD converted to a live product would have been false as well, although that was a thought shared by many including myself.  But after diving into the D-Show system, I quickly realized that while there were several similarities between VENUE and Pro Tools HD---this was also a whole different animal and was developed from the ground up for the most demanding needs in live sound.  While the Venue family is vastly different from Pro Tools HD, there are several similarities---but the ability to integrate both together is something that has completely revolutionized the approach to how we setup for, mix, and record live events either for concerts or in a house of worship with features such as VIRTUAL SOUNDCHECK, DIRECT to PRO TOOLS Recording, TDM PLUGINS, etc.  Shortly upon the release of the first commercially available D-Show system, the technical team at my former church before moving to Atlanta decided to purchase a Venue system and I’ve been using one ever since. At Blackhawk Ministries, we were one of the most technically advanced churches in the country--Venue made a significant impact on how we did what we did and they continue to do.

Rather than develop a product and say “here you go!”, Digidesign (now AVID) sought the input of countless FOH and Monitor Engineers to understand how they worked, what they liked from existing consoles, what they wanted to see in a new design, and to better realize what has been developed in the past to push forward into the future.  Back then it was simply known as “the Venue console”, but today Venue is a family of products that now consists of (4) very different and distinct mixing systems.  While these (4) consoles are uniquely different, they are also virtually the same.  In other words if you wish to install a full DSHOW at FOH and a the smaller SC48 for monitors, you and your staff will not need to learn two distinct systems.  Because the core software is identical among all of the boards, you can share sessions, mixes, presets, and user data among all consoles as well as pre-configure them ahead of time on your laptop or desktop computer.  This is not only ideal for those with multiple consoles but also when you have a team of volunteers that need to be trained and learn each console.  With VENUE it’s not only the same across the board--but with features such as the VIRTUAL SOUNDCHECK it makes training your team just that much easier!

There are technically two divisions of the Venue console--those that have a separate Stage Rack I/O with a remote connection back to the FOH position and those that have the I/O at the FOH position.  The advantage of the Stage I/O that is separate from the console at FOH has some significant advantages and is one that Avid has helped to pioneer.  Utilizing experiencing drawn from design of professional grade converters for recording, Venue is without question one of the best-sounding consoles money can buy no matter which flavor of Venue you choose.  Each input is basically the same converter as their 192I/O for Pro Tools HD, which is substantial.  Patching directly into the Stage I/O box eliminates the need to run hundreds of feet of analog copper cabling, which significantly reduces the loss of signal strength and clarity. The Stage I/O connects to the FOH computer via BNC cables allowing for runs several hundred feet long, again with no

loss of quality.  In other words by patching directly into the Stage Rack your audio hits a world-class A/D converter and is completely digital reducing virtually all noise, maintaining the clarity and integrity of the audio, and reducing the need for a large, bulky, and highly expensive snake. The two consoles that utilize this technology are the original D-SHOW and the PROFILE.  While the PROFILE MIXRACK uses the very same control surface as the PROFILE, the system mainframe computer and audio I/O are housed at FOH in a single chassis. The SC48 is the first of the Venue family to house the computer and I/O in the console itself, making for an even more compact and affordable solution.  But regardless of which design you go with, the converters are identical.  Another feature that is identical are the microphone pre-amplifiers.  Back in 2002 I was introduced to the Digidesign PRE, an 8-channel mic-pre that completely surprised my ears.  This is one of the most under-rated multi-channel pre’s on the market because the myth that it requires Pro Tools.  While Pro Tools, either LE or HD, does allow the engineer to have direct control via MIDI of all settings including gain---all parameters are controllable right on the front-panel.  Every mic-pre on every Venue board is this very same pre-amplifier with a small modification in the amplifier gain stage.  The PRE has stepped gain of 5dB increments which provides better signal to noise in critical recording applications.  But in a live environment, 5dB steps are not acceptable---so Avid altered the gain stage to 1dB steps.  Aside from that change, nothing is different.  Each mic-pre on Venue is fully re-callable allowing the user to have TRUE RE-CALL of all settings.  Think about it---having scene re-call for a live show means very little when your pre-amps are not the same settings as they were previously.  If your input gains change, so does your mix, your monitors, your effects sends, and everything else that follows that gain (which is everything!).

Another major component in design brought over from the world of Pro Tools HD was the TDM (Time Domain Multiplexing) plugin processing.  In fact, this technology is arguably the biggest feature of the Venue console (aside from direct to Pro Tools recording). A plugin is a software version of a piece of hardware such as an Equalizer, Compressor, Reverbs, or other Effects, etc.  In the early days of Pro Tools, Digidesign was the first company to implement plugins into their audio software environment. Likewise, the first third-party plugin was designed for Pro Tools.  Venue uses the same plugins that are used in Pro Tools HD, which are the best possible plugins one can buy.  Unlike traditional computer audio plugins that run off of the computer’s processor, Pro Tools HD has its own DSP (Digital Signal Processing) cards with processing that is optimized and dedicated for such use.  Likewise, these plugins are written to take full advantage of the DSP providing the best possible audio math processing, summing, and headroom that often plagues native-based plugins.  Because of such capability, it is possible to emulate the sound characteristics of real hardware.  One of the reasons that Pro Tools HD is THE standard for professional recording is because of the TDM plugins.  For the first time, this technology is available in the world of live sound---and nothing else could ever duplicate, replicate, or even properly imitate what is taking place in Venue.  When I installed the Venue console at my church, we replaced not just a large format analog console and bulky copper snake--but RACKS and I do mean RACKS of outboard hardware which do not come with scene re-call, mind you!  Not only were these racks of hardware replaced, it was a substantial upgrade in the quality of compressors, equalizers, reverbs, etc. that these TDM plugins were emulating.  The cost of a single Universal Audio 1176 compressor can be $2,000 per channel---but the Bombfactory plugin version within Venue sounds nearly identical, but can be used on numerous channels at one time.  The same can be said for the reverbs I had and what I now have on our D-Show console.  The TDM plugins available to me mixing FOH has no equal on any other console at ANY price point, likewise neither is that quality available.  Like Pro Tools HD, additional DSP cards can be added later should your needs grown and expand (the SC48 does not offer DSP expansion).  The TDM architecture within Pro Tools HD has revolutionized the studio world, Venue has done the same thing for the live scene.  But put them together and you have a true system unlike anything else.  Whether you’re wanting to import the mix settings from the studio Pro Tools HD computer to your live Venue mixes, track your live performances directly to Pro Tools, or utilize the Virtual Soundcheck feature---there simply is nothing like it. 

One concern that some have about a digital console powered by software in a live environment is the inevitable “blue screen of death” as it’s come to be known.  In other words...a CRASH!!  While it is true that Venue is based on a Windows XP operating system, it is an embedded operating system which is quite different.  Basically, an embedded operating system takes the functions that are needed to write code and operate the system without adding things that just aren’t needed.  The reality is that Windows XP is a darn good operating system, but on a general purpose computer there are countless other factors that get in the way of it stability and performance.  When all of that junk is taken out and the operating system is configured for a specific piece of hardware, those issues are completely removed from the operating system level.  The reality is, VENUE DOES NOT CRASH!  I’ve tried to make it crash, many times---it just can’t be done.  Another reason that I can’t make it crash is that every component of the D-Show series (including Profile) has redundancy power and audio connections.  If a cable gets cut or a power supply goes down, there are several others still operating the console.  In fact, I can turn off several power supplies, I can even pull system connection cables---heck, I can literally re-boot the console while audio is playing and still mix the show!  No other console----again, NO OTHER CONSOLE can do this.  If there was ever an insurance policy for a FOH engineer, this would certainly be the best one I know of.

I’m not just one of Avid’s top Venue Product Specialists, I’m a real world audio engineer whose speciality is both Live Sound and Studio Production and Broadcast.  I’ve used just about every major console and recording system on the market, I can honestly tell you that there is no other integration between the live and studio world as you have with Venue and Pro Tools. Mixing broadcast on a weekly basis with Blackhawk Ministries I fully realized what makes this system so unique; it has completely changed how I record and mix for television broadcast and live concert production for the modern house of worship.  The following video was a concert I recorded through Venue using the Pro Tools HD option while recording video via a MOTU V4HD to Final Cut HD, then re-mixed on Pro Tools HD in my own studio.  There was not a single piece of outboard gear used other than Venue on the front-end and Pro Tools HD on the back end.