Estian Els with Kyle Robson at the Mosaïek Teatro.
The Mosaïek Teatro, a large-capacity venue that forms part of the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg has continued to remain ahead of the pack by becoming the first in South Africa to invest in KLANG’s state-of-the-art immersive in-ear monitoring system to complement their new DiGiCo SD5 mixing consoles.
In October 2019, technical manager at the Mosaïek Teatro, Estian Els and his team took delivery of two DiGiCo SD5 mixing consoles, purchased from DWR Distribution. “Earlier this year, the Mosaïek Teatro hosted the third season of M-Net’s The Voice South Africa, which gave our technical team the opportunity to work on the DiGiCo SD10 console that was used for the show. We all became really comfortable with the technology and, therefore, when the time came for us to invest in new consoles for the Mosaïek Teatro, we decided to go with two DiGiCo SD5s,” Estian explains.
While the team have been very happy with their DiGiCo consoles, they did experience a few challenges with musician’s in-ear monitor mixes. “In the past, musicians were able to log onto our console remotely and arrange their own in-ear monitors mixes ahead of Sunday morning worship services. This was no longer possible once we adopted the DiGiCo platform, which created a lot of pressure on our monitor engineer ahead of Sunday services. Our worship band has very limited time to rehearse ahead of services, and we only have fifteen minutes to try and accommodate everyone before we have to go live,” says Estian.
DiGiCo product manager at DWR Distribution, Kyle Robson has been assisting Estian and his team with their new consoles and suggested that Estian consider KLANG’s immersive in-ear monitoring solution as a possible answer. “We looked at a number of products from a range of manufacturers. However, most of them are network-based, and therefore require additional network cables and switchers to run, which was not ideal in our setting. Kyle provided us with a KLANG:fabrik demo unit to see if it would work for us – and it was an instant success with artists and technicians alike,” Estian says.
KLANG:fabrik is a professional personal monitoring system that allows musicians to adjust their in-ear monitor mix to fit their personal preference using an application that runs on any smart device and integrates seamlessly with the DiGiCo SD consoles. What sets KLANG apart from any other product on the market is the fact that, unlike traditional solutions, KLANG makes use of immersive audio technology rather than the traditional stereo mix. “In a regular stereo mix, transparency is achieved by cutting frequencies, which means the guitars are getting thinner, the keys and pads are losing some body and presence,” explains Kyle.
He goes on to say that “KLANG:fabrik achieves transparency and separates channels in an immersive space around you. As a result, you have more options in comparison to the traditional left, right and louder controls. With KLANG you have vertical (up and down), forward and back, left and right and volume controls to create space and separation between channels. The technology allows for far better transparency in a mix than we have ever been able to achieve in the past.”
“We have a number of very skilled and prolific musicians performing at the Mosaïek, and the response to KLANG has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Estian. “In fact, some have commented that they actually hate it, because they feel that they have been spoiled and never want to work without it again!”
