Interest surrounding Avolites’ newest lighting console, the live control focused
Arena, has been gathering momentum after a number of festival appearances,
including at Somerset House’s Summer Series for acts including Angus & Julia
Stone.
Set in one of London’s most iconic landmarks, Summer Series featured a diverse
and impressive line-up of headline artists alongside hotly tipped emerging acts. As
house desk for the 11-day series of performances, Arena was used by the likes of
folk duo Angus & Julia Stone LD Toby Hoggarth, while George Ezra, lit by John
Barker, also employed an Avolites set-up.
The Arena combines the popular interface of the Tiger Touch II with more live
control than ever before.
Alongside its vibrant main display, Arena’s second touch screen provides an
additional workspace window, also labelling the adjacent macro buttons and rotary
pots. These fully assignable playback encoder pots allow intuitive control of
channels and effects.
The Arena also comes packed with 40 faders, each with electronic legends, for
speedy access to all playbacks, fixtures and palettes. An in-built managed network
switch makes networking multiple devices simple and reliable.
This was the band’s third appearance in London in a year, and as their sound and
fanbase have grown, so too has their lighting set-up. Hoggarth’s rig for the show
included eight Chromlech Jarags, Clay Paky B-EYE K20s and five 2-cell moles, to
complement a house lighting rig that included eight K20s, six Mythos, 16 GLPX4s, 18
K10s, twelve Alpha spots, 48 Thomas bi light blinders and 12 atomics, designed by
Petter Skramstad.
“Thoughts on the Arena? Well it is obviously an advantage having the extra set of
faders, and the LCD legends are useful too!” says Hoggarth. “I’ve been using V9 on
my usual Mobile set up, and it’s working brilliantly for me. Unfortunately, due to
time constraints on the current tour, I’ve not had a chance to fully explore the Key
Frame Shapes function, but I can’t wait to try it out, as from what I’ve seen you can
build great combinations of effects in very little time, something which up until now
has been very difficult, not just on Avo desks but others too.”
Huw Llewellyn, House Lighting Technician for Somerset House, was excited to be
among the first to use the new console, having used the Sapphire Touch on the
Summer Series in 2014.
“The Arena’s extra faders are just brilliant,” says Llewellyn. “And with the new
software, even without motorised faders, you can change page virtually, without
affecting the fader underneath.
“The second screen really comes into its own, especially with the encoder pots. I
used them to do rate masters as well as tap tempo, and they were brilliant. People
will find ways to use those that Avo never thought of.”
