Buena Park, CA--New York University's Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts is the premier venue for the presentation of cultural and performing arts events for all of NYU and lower Manhattan. Since opening in 2003, the 860-seat Skirball Center has been an educational and community building resource, providing NYU's first large-scale, professional performance space on campus.
Left to right: Ethan Bade and Alan Busch.
Recently the Skirball Center replaced its older analog front of house console with a Yamaha PM5D digital audio console purchased from Scharff Weisberg.
“About once a month a client would have to rent a digital board, and it was almost always a Yamaha PM5D,” said Ethan Bade, head audio engineer. “Our purchasing decision was made pretty clear after speaking with engineers who had brought in various consoles in the past, that a 5D would eliminate additional rental costs and save on set up time.”
Both Bade and his associate engineer, Alan Busch, are very familiar with Yamaha digital boards and said the recall features are what sold the Skirball staff on a digital console, as there are several events that return on a monthly basis that have the exact same set up each time. “In addition to engineer familiarity, the Yamaha PM5D was particularly attractive due to its ease of connectivity to the DME (Yamaha digital mixing engine) which was upgraded from a DME32 to a DME64. We also have a DSP5D on the deck cascaded to the PM5D via a DCU5D. Drive lines to the DME in the amp room under the house are sent over Audinate Dante cards. Our signal paths are now digital all the way from the stage to the amps.”
Skirball handles roughly 120 in-house presentations and co-presentations each season, as well as more than 100 events by other university departments and clients from the community. The venue is a very versatile performance space, with programming spanning the arts: dance, popular and world music, corporate conferences, theatre, family entertainment, comedy, movie and live event viewings and television broadcasts.
