The Palace Theatre has hosted everything America has celebrated in the last 100 or so years: marquee-level entertainment, Roaring 20s gangsters, and one of the city’s and the country’s finest movie palaces of its day. After its inevitable decline in the urbanization of the 1970s, it was rescued by the city a century after its founding in 1916 and renovated as a live music destination.
[Laser-Focused Sound Coverage]
The 2,500-capacity venue, now co-managed and co-operated by hometown First Avenue Productions and Chicago-based Jam Productions, was fitted in 2017 with a new L-Acoustics K2 PA system. Now, the Palace Theatre has just capped off a nearly decade-long revival with a new pair of DiGiCo Quantum225 consoles, one each at front of house and monitors. Both were sold through and installed by local integrator and rental vendor Allied Productions & Sales.
After nursing the venue’s nearly decade-old consoles along for years, Randy Hawkins, head audio engineer/A1 at the Palace, said the arrival of the new DiGiCo desks has been “a game-changer here. I’ve been touring with a 225 with the band Atmosphere for over three years now and I love it, and it’s the perfect choice for this venue. The thinking had originally been to go with no consoles at all, since so many artists tour with their own. But more and more of them tour with DiGiCo, or are at least very familiar with the DiGiCo worksurface. So by having that here, ready for them to plug their files into, we’re really building the model for the future of touring,” at a time when costs and logistics are paramount, he believed.
Hawkins said choosing the same console for both FOH and monitors further supports that approach, with engineers able to move positions as needed without changing their worksurfaces. “The DiGiCo worksurface is instantly familiar to the majority of touring engineers out there,” he said confidently. “Very few need any tutorial on them, and most visiting engineers will just plug in their files and go.”
Like other engineers, Hawkins, who says he’ll mix the occasional opening act at the venue each week, is a fan of the Quantum’s processing. “I enjoy the Spice Rack the most, though Mustard is cool, too,” he said. “When you factor those in, you realize that this was a massive upgrade for the room’s sound, and the consoles bring huge new firepower with them. Plus, First Avenue, our sister venue, also has Quantum225 consoles, so what we’ve done is built a Quantum ecosystem between them, one that also has L-Acoustics sound systems in both — L2 at First Avenue and K2 here. Mix engineers can seamlessly move between the venues and find the same great interfaces in both. It’s a good place to be.”