SAE Institute Sydney invests in Audient
Published: ASIA
AUSTRALIA: A new studio space at the SAE Institute in Sydney recently became the home of a new Audient ASP4816 mixing console. Having made the purchase and been impressed with the result, the institute then returned to the British manufacturer a few weeks later to purchase a second. In total, the Sydney campus houses 10 studios and six live rooms of varying sizes.
SAE’s senior tech supervisor, Stephen Rangott, explained the factors that led the college to invest in Audient desks. ‘The ASP4816 is the only small format console we found that wasn't missing a lot of the big console features,’ he offered. ‘The short fader and long fader paths are both feature-rich, the routing section is highly flexible and a bus compressor is something you never see in a console of this size.
‘The ASP4816 is used by our first trimester students primarily,’ he continued. ‘It is accompanied by a 16x16 Pro Tools HDX system with some external hardware effects, and overlooks a 5m x 7m recording space. We use this space to cover the basics of signal flow, recording and mixing.’ As a teaching aid, Mr Rangott and his colleagues were ‘most impressed with the full-featured routing section. It allows us to introduce some “large console” signal path concepts, which are revisited later in the course.’
Another important factor for the university was the desk’s analogue format. ‘Analogue consoles are still used heavily in studio and live production,’ said Mr Rangott. ‘Additionally, most digital consoles and DAWs are still based around many principles of analogue studio practices, which makes analogue equipment great for learning signal path concepts on.’