Avid Unveils Groundbreaking Unified Platform for Live Sound Mixing

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID), the platform that powers media and entertainment, today announced a massive expansion to its award-winning Avid VENUE™ | S6L family of live sound systems, with three new control surfaces, a new engine, and two new I/O racks – all on a unified platform. Offering unmatched modularity, scalability and flexibility to meet any size production, space, or budget requirement, VENUE | S6L is the industry’s only live sound platform with 100% software, hardware, and show file compatibility across all system components. Unveiled today at the fifth annual Avid Connect, the new VENUE | S6L components will be demonstrated at the NAB Show in Avid’s booth #SU801, April 9-12, and at Prolight + Sound in Avid’s booth #G91 in Hall 3.1, April 10-13.

Avid VENUE | S6L is a modular live sound mixing system that delivers best-in-class functionality for a range of applications including front-of-house, monitor, broadcast, and theater. With this new release, VENUE | S6L now offers more component options to configure and scale a system to meet any production, space, or budget requirement. Customers can take control of their mix with a choice of five surfaces—including the new S6L-48D, S6L-24C, and S6L-16C—that offer from 16 to 48 faders. These control surfaces can be paired with a choice of three engines, including the new E6L-112, and can be connected to any combination of S6L’s four I/O rack options, including the new Stage 32 and Local 16.

VENUE | S6L modularity enables engineers to scale systems up or down to meet their changing requirements for control, processing, and I/O. All systems share 100% VENUE show file compatibility and sound quality, regardless of the system configuration. And with S6L’s True Gain technology, engineers can easily share I/O racks across multiple networked S6L systems without any loss of audio quality, reducing I/O and cable requirements, set-up time, and transportation costs.

VENUE | S6L family features the same VENUE software and workflows across every model, presenting engineers with an identical user experience and total familiarity regardless of system configuration. This “learn once, use everywhere” design eliminates complexity, allowing engineers to focus on helping their artist to deliver the best performance possible.

“The new Avid VENUE | S6L family makes mixing and recording any live production easy, delivering the unmatched power and flexibility artists and engineers rely on,” said Dana Ruzicka, Chief Product Officer at Avid. “With 100% software, hardware, and show file compatibility and interoperability across the entire line, engineers can create the perfect system for any application, and scale the biggest stadium shows down to the smallest after-hours club appearance with ease. And because everything is on the same platform, it enables us to quickly bring new features and components to market.”

New VENUE | S6L System components

A complete VENUE | S6L System includes control surface, engine, and one or more I/O components­—Avid is announcing the following:

• New control surfaces:
  • VENUE | S6L-48D: 48 + 2 faders, 160 assignable knobs, 1 integrated Master Touchscreen, 5 integrated Channel Touch Modules
  • VENUE | S6L-24C: 24 + 2 faders, 32 assignable knobs, 1 integrated Master Touchscreen
  • VENUE | S6L-16C: 16 + 2 faders, 32 assignable knobs

• New engine:
  • VENUE | E6L-112: 112 input processing channels, 48 mix busses + LCR

• New I/O racks:
  • Stage 32—Maximum I/O flexibility in a smaller footprint for stage or remote I/O needs, with support for a mix of up to 32 inputs and outputs total, choosing from a variety of analog I/O, digital I/O, and Dante card options
  • Local 16—Expands control surface local I/O capabilities in a compact package that provides 8 analog inputs, 8 analog outputs, and 8 AES digital inputs and outputs

* Option cards are available as separate purchases and not included with core systems.

About Avid VENUE | S6L

Offering unprecedented processing capabilities—with over 300 processing channels—S6L delivers unrelenting performance and reliability through its advanced engine design, backed up by modern touchscreen workflows and the scalability to easily handle large, complex tours and events. Like all Avid VENUE systems, S6L provides seamless Avid Pro Tools® integration and on-board industry-standard plugins, with higher track counts and more processing power than ever before. And with the new WSG-HD option card, S6L now provides engineers with unmatched integration with Waves SoundGrid systems, including extensive tactile and software control of plugin parameters, a vastly simplified setup, system redundancy, legacy show file import of plugins parameters, and much greater creative flexibility.

Since its introduction in 2015, engineers including Jim Warren and Mike Prowda (Radiohead), Paul “Pab” Boothroyd (Paul McCartney), Greg Nelson (Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog, Incubus), Greg Price (Black Sabbath), Fern Alvarez, Jr. and Steve McCale (Elvis Costello) have turned to VENUE | S6L to achieve better sounding mixes for their artists with greater speed and efficiency.

Availability

New VENUE | S6L components will be available summer 2018. For more information, visit www.avid.com/S6L.