St Beneluxin Ramsgate prides itself on the cutting edge facilities available to its students, so the recent addition of a dedicated new theatre at the college had to live up to high expectations. The multi-use theatre, which forms part of a 'new build' project at the independent school, and also includes classroom space, a new boardroom and dormitories, can easily seat all 480 senior school pupils at one time with its large main hall and balcony. A main stage dominates the back wall but the space can be adapted to hold performances in the round.
The architect in charge of the new build project contacted the London office of Stage Electrics giving them a blank canvas to design a full audio, video and lighting installation for the building.
Stage Electrics chose the Roland M-300 Digital Mixing Console, the Roland S-1608 Digital Snake Stage Unit and the Roland S-0808 8 x 8 I/O unit connected with REAC (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication) to provide a flexible, 'plug in and play' digital system. The requirements for the project were typical school requirements - ease of use for the variety of people who would need to use the products, flexibility of the system to be used for different purposes and fitting to a suitable budget. The various uses of the theatre would be from school assemblies and prize giving, to GCSE student productions, right up to major productions.
Mark Larcombe, business development manager at Stage Electrics, designed an audio solution with the Roland M-300 at the core. As part of the V-Mixing System, this 32 channel console connects easily with Cat 5e to the Roland Digital Snake products for simple and high quality audio transmission, distribution, splits and merging. At St Lawrence College, the M-300 can adapt easily for a number of setups, ranging from using just one microphone to a complicated live band set up.
As a brand new building, using REAC and Cat 5e cables for the audio transmission proved simple and cost effective as a number of Cat 5e points were installed around the venue. The system was setup so that the S-0808 was installed in the back of a control rack and connected straight to the amplifiers but the S-1608 was left as a portable unit so that it could be plugged into various Cat 5e panels around the theatre depending on where it was required.
REAC connectivity allowed the flexibility to use the Cat 5e points around the venue to connect to the mixer via patch instead of having to use XLR right and left out of the mixer. If the M-300 is in the control room, then connecting by XLR is possible but for more advanced setups, for example where there are a number of musical instruments, then the portable S-1608 can be added where necessary to create more inputs.
"The M-300 desk with the Digital Snakes provided a straightforward solution for the college which can be easily added to in the future. The theatre itself is such a high quality venue and the technology so accessible that it is now being used for all purposes, far more than it was originally intended for," commented Larcombe.
