Venue (sound system)

VENUE is a brand of live sound digital mixing consoles introduced by Digidesign in February 2005. The family now includes three different consoles and a number of ways they can be configured. They can all be connected to Pro Tools, the audio editing software also created by Avid/Digidesign, to provide recording and 'Virtual Soundcheck' facilities. One of the system's key marketing points is its use of the same TDM plugins as Pro Tools, an industry standard digital audio workstation (DAW). This is designed to enable the sounds recorded by the artist in the studio to be easily recreated on stage, and to allow for greater flexibility in signal processing without heavy and mechanical-shock-sensitive racks of external processors. There is also a PC-based offline editor for creation and editing of show files, although there is no audio processing in the editor.

Digidesign was acquired by Avid Technology in 1995, but its products continued to be branded Digidesign until the brand was phased out in 2010, and VENUE systems are now branded Avid.

This was the first and largest control surface in the VENUE range, and was discontinued in 2015. The main unit, which includes a trackball, master controls, faders and meters, can be expanded with up to three sidecars to give a maximum of 56 faders. One sidecar was included in the standard package.

The console can either be connected to the Mix Rack, which contains all FOH I/O, DSP and stage I/O in one rack, or to the combination of an FOH rack and a Stage Rack. The FOH rack contains the DSP and a small amount of inputs and outputs, and the Stage Rack contains the main stage I/O. They are linked using a digital snake cable, with an option to use a redundant cable in parallel. There can be a maximum of two Stage Racks linked to one FOH rack.

This smaller console contains all of the features of the larger console in a smaller form factor, and quickly became the industry's standard touring and festival console for many years. Though it has fewer input faders, it can still run the same show, as it can be connected to the same combinations of inputs and outputs described above. Avid sold its last Profile and Mix Rack consoles in the Summer of 2016, although they are still supported.

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