The Eisenhower Hall Theatre on the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York’s Hudson Valley is celebrating its 50th anniversary season with a new DiGiCo Quantum338 audio mixing console at front-of-house. Typically referred to simply as Ike Hall, the 4,400-seat venue serves not only the United States Corps of Cadets but also performing arts fans with artists as Toby Keith, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Trace Adkins, Bob Hope, George Burns, Gabriel Iglesias, Johnny Cash, Frankie Valli, Dave Matthews, and Luciano Pavarotti, in addition to the West Point Band, touring theatrical productions, and musicals, as well as visiting government officials and dignitaries.
“We were just looking to upgrade the theater into the next century,” said Kiehl Morris, Ike Hall’s audiovisual and theater specialist. “We were also looking to incorporate Dante and running fiber throughout the theater. Those choices led us to DiGiCo.” The previously installed FOH and monitor consoles were starting to age out and needed to be replaced, added Morris, who also works at Bethel Woods Performing Arts Center and started out in the audio business at age 14 assisting his older brother with his PA rig.
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Indeed, it was Morris’ experience with DiGiCo desks at Bethel Woods PAC that led to West Point purchasing the new console, he continues: “I brought the Q338 to the table; our people liked it, so we went with it.” Learning that the Quantum338 could also handle monitors from its location at FOH and that it comprehensively integrates with KLANG’s immersive in-ear monitor mixing system, which is earmarked for the next round of upgrades at Ike Hall, were points in the DiGiCo’s favor, Morris said, adding that they purchased the new console from SCN Top 50 systems integrator Washington Professional Systems.
Morris and technical director James Voltaire, Ike Hall’s two full-time production staff members, installed the Quantum338 in the summer of 2024. The new console drives an EM Acoustics HALO line array system configured with two main left/right hangs and a center cluster, together with three delay clusters covering the two balconies plus under-balcony delays and front fill. More than a dozen stage monitors as well as side-fills can also be controlled from the FOH position.
The implementation of a Dante network at the venue was additionally spurred by the purchase of a Shure Axient digital wireless microphone system, which integrates seamlessly with the Quantum338. “Incorporating the DiGiCo console with our new Shure Axient over Dante gave us significantly more gain control than we had previously. Our gain structure is much better now,” Morris reported.
As for the onboard features and functionality of the Quantum338, Morris said, “We like the Mustard processing for what we’re doing here. Our bread and butter is handling AV for the Army, plus we also do a lot of one-offs and touring events. For the different AV applications, we also like the Q338’s control group feature, where we can spill out what we need. For those different events, we can set up control groups and just quickly grab one, spill it out onto the console and get going, because we usually don’t have much time. These guys come in, and within five minutes we’re rocking and rolling. The ease of being able to do everything really quickly on the fly and set up anything we need, that was one of our biggest requirements.”
Since the DiGiCo has been installed, the venue has worked with the United States Military Academy Band, otherwise known as the West Point Band. “They brought a file over that we converted from an SD7 file up to a Q338 and it saved them a ton of time,” Morris shared. Ike Hall’s Quantum338 is not the only DiGiCo at West Point, either: “There’s another entity on post that just got a Quantum338T to do large-format conferencing,” he said.
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Ike Hall attracts anywhere between six and 12 major touring productions a year, Morris says. The 2023-2024 season included musicals and theatrical productions such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Chicago, and The Kite Runner, while the 2024-2025 season will include musicals The Addams Family and Come from Away. Some of those productions carry their own sound production control gear, Morris says, but for the many who don’t, Ike Hall’s crew is ready to assist. “We recently had Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band here. We integrated their console with ours and it was easy,” he said.
