Crystal Cruises standardizes on INNOVASON Sy48
October 2009
Crystal Cruises is the very definition of the luxury travel experience. For an unprecedented fifteen years, Crystal Cruises has been voted “World’s Best” by the prestigious Condé Nast Traveller magazine, and operates the two top-rated luxury cruise liners in the world: the 922-guest Crystal Symphony and the 1,070-guest Crystal Serenity. As part of a recent technical upgrade, Crystal Cruises has standardised on INNOVASON’s Sy48 digital mixing consoles to be installed into the featured venue aboard both ships, the multi-purpose Galaxy Lounge.
Kyle Toth, Entertainment Technical director at Crystal Cruises explains: “We have the most extensive entertainment and educational programs in the ultra-luxury cruise market and the Sy48 has become the backbone of our audio support for those programs. We offer multimedia lectures, classical concerts, headline vocalists and instrumentalists, comedians and several full scale production shows. The most exciting application for the system is definitely our production shows which feature a live orchestra and singers supported by playback material coming from a Mac Pro running ProTools.”
“I had been looking for a replacement for our old digital systems for a while as they were outdated, and simply not powerful enough for our needs,” continued Toth. “I saw the Sy48 at InfoComm, and the feature that immediately caught my attention was the SmartFAD system. When I saw how simple it was to create a SmartFAD zone with deployment faders, I simply had to see more. The nearly infinite routing capabilities and extreme flexibility of the system really appealed to me. In fact, every single limitation of our previous solution was solved by Sy48. In some cases,” he said with a grin, “certain things that we simply couldn’t do before, we can now do three different ways!”
Toth also appreciated the fact that Sy48 is very intuitive for a live mixing application, yet didn’t compromise on the automation. “Our production shows are fully automated so I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice automation features for a comfortable ‘live’ feel. On the other hand, with our tight schedule, I knew that a comfort zone would be important,” he remarked. “Actually, one of the best things about the board is that it is as equally welcoming to the novice as it is to the experienced engineer. Since I have a number of technicians and engineers who will, at one point or another, sit in front of the console, this is an attractive attribute of the system. I can put a novice in front of this thing and it won’t scare the tar out of him – at the same time, I can put my most technically proficient person in front of it and they’ll be impressed! The Sy48 really offers the best of both worlds.”
This impression was reinforced when he got to see the console in action with rock band Tesla, where he was able to speak to the band’s engineer, Steve Emler. “By then, it wasn’t just about the features – I was really impressed by the sound of the system too,” admitted Toth. “At the end of the day, a mixer has to sound great, regardless of features. To my ears, the Sy48 is the best-sounding digital console out there. It has just a touch of warmth with superb sonic fidelity.”
Toth concluded with a particular mention for Kevin Madden at INNOVASON USA. “I’ve been extremely impressed with the level of support I’ve received, “ he noted. “INNOVASON has a great product that they can tailor for any application, and the I/O options are very comprehensive and flexible. On top of that, Kevin himself is a great guy. He has a way of sharing his passion for the product without being pushy that is highly appreciable. I think that we are putting the console to great use with highly complex shows of over 100 scenes each, and multiple mixes per scene, so I’m also excited to share my enthusiasm with others who can relate to this type of project or are interested to learn more.”
Picture shows from left to right:
Ken Parks (Trainer), Kyle Toth (Entertainment Technical Director), John Ramirez (Audio Engineer)
