Avantis in theatre

[KevgParticipant]

Hello,

I’m looking at the Avantis. My venue is a receiving theatre and does a lot of community shows.

I know the Avantis is a new product, and Covid hasn’t helped people using it. I’m pretty sure I will be one of the first theatres in NZ to use a Avantis as its main desk if I go with it.

Questions.

1. How easy is it for someone who has not used the desk to use it.

2. Scenes. How good is it for musical theatre. Anything you hate or love.

2.1 is there a next scene button without hiting confirm

2.2 can you edit scenes easily on the fly.

3. I’m looking at going fully Dante rather then the A&H network. How everyone finding patching on a dante box.

4. Any features you feel is frustrating

5. Things you love about it.

Thanks.

[JR RichardsonParticipant]

Kia Ora kevG,

I’m based down/up in Nelson and have just taken shipment of an Avantis with musical theatre applications firmly in mind. My understanding is several have shipped around the country in the last month.

I’m in the midst of building a Show file for a season in 3-weeks time, and so far, so good!

I quizzed A&H on this application who said tha5 scene handling is practically identical to DLive, which is a very popular platform for MT. I’m unsure whether (or in which ways) it differs. From what I can see referencing DLive resources while exploring Avantis’s scene management, they’re much the same (Though I expect the community will jump in if I am wrong).

In answer to your questions, I’m still new to the platform, but I can say:
1 – Good, in terms of typical engineering operation if they have good technical understanding of digital audio workflow. Some of the scene management, recall safe or global settings is likely to be well over the head of the average community engineer – something I would expect you could cater toward with show-file templates and in-house expertise.
2 – Early days yet. But I’m excited to explore Custom control for a radio mic PAFL , custom layers on a scene by scene basis, DCA spills; and the AMM for general dialogue appears to be hugely powerful and simply to deploy.
2.1 – Yes, there is an option to remove the confirm, and to auto-advance (preselect next cue). All soft-keys are user defined.
2.2 – Haven’t got into scene updates yet, but you can assign ‘Update cue’ to a soft key.
3 – Unsure, I’ve remained proprietary for my I/O to contain cost.
4 – Nothing stands out yet, but this is a huge upgrade from my previous console, so I’m still in awe of it. I expect I’ll discover things in time.

Ngā mihi, JR

[KevgParticipant]

Kia Ora,

It is great to know there is more going around the country. I used to work in the UK and A&H was always a rider-friendly desk. But while I lived in Auckland only saw the odd A&H desk. So knowing people are using them is a great plus point for me.

Thanks for answering my questions! Hoping to get my hands on one to play with.

Let me know how you get on with the desk on your show. It looks like a great desk.

Ngā mihi, Kev

[StixParticipant]

The first Question you need to ask yourself is if 64 channels and 42 mix busses will do everything you will need for Theatre shows. That is not expandable!

1 Easy to learn? Thats subjective as any new desk has a learning curve and it also depends on “someones” experience as to wether they will find it “easy” If they have experience with other A&H boards then they should find it very easy to adapt.

2 Scenes: We are also looking at Avantis for our hire dept for theatre use also here in NZ! Scenes are great like dLive is as there are scene crossfade times, recall filters, parameter safes etc. Easy to insert and move/ copy scenes. Download Avantis director and have a play yourself.
Scenes can be auto increment and instant depending on user preference settings. Recall/Edit any scene and then simply update. Putting scene Previous next and Go on the lower softkeys can be convenient. Take care to not bump them though!

3 Why just Dante I/O? Its more expensive for the Dante boxes. Why not buy the cheaper Slink based I/O like the GX4816 etc and then add a Dante card for console splits/recording etc?

4 AMM PFL issue has been mentioned here. Hopefully others can chip in here. 64ch is limiting for some Theatre shows.

5 Compact, powerful, well thought out user interface.

We are an A&H Dealer in NZ if you want further info or competitive pricing then get in touch. Audio Dynamite.

[KevgParticipant]

Thanks for the feedback Stix,

Have looked at the slink, and used to use a GLD in a theatre in the past.

Why Dante..

Qlab, wireless mics, amps all in Dante. And venue cabling is set to work with Dante.

But mainly redundancy.. I’m in Rotorua and the sulphur eats the RJ45, so having a back up link is vital.

Yeah 64 channels.

[AlexIGParticipant]

Was pretty easy to learn. Dante was relatively simple, make sure u get the dante card for this mixer tho. Scenes are pretty solid and easy to edit. I came from a Yamaha cl5 and this Avantis was better in every aspect.

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