VENUE | S6L is Avid's new live sound system, modular and designed to successfully take on the world's most demanding tours and shows. With its unprecedented processing capacity (more than 300 channels), the S6L meets the greatest demands of live sound with the most powerful processing engine in the industry. For a long time now, VENUE has been one of the most reliable and sought-after live mixing systems in the world, a tradition that continues with VENUE | S6L.
Following the arrival of the S3L-X a few months ago, Avid has decided to renew its range of large-format systems such as the D-Show and Profile with a system at the technological cutting edge and with features that live up to what the market demands. Like its predecessor, the S3L-X, the S6L incorporates a processing engine based on HDX cards with 32-bit floating-point processing and 64-bit floating-point mixing.
The S6L supports Dante, MADI, Thunderbolt and other emerging technologies to ensure compatibility with a wide variety of Avid and third-party products, so you can easily connect the S6L to any new or existing installation. Like all VENUE systems, the S6L features industry-standard plug-ins and Pro Tools integration, but with more tracks and processing power than ever. In addition, it will be possible to use Waves plug-ins in DSP format, since Waves and Avid have announced that the Soundgrid® processing system will be integrated into the S6L. The S6L is a modular system: we can configure different systems with different combinations of control surface and processing unit (Engine).
As for control surfaces, there will be three to choose from: the S6L-32D with 32 faders and 4 touchscreens, the S6L-24D with 24 faders and 3 touchscreens, and finally the S6L-24 with 24 faders and 1 touchscreen. As for the processing unit, there are two different models: the E6L-192, capable of processing 192 input channels and 96 mix buses + LCR, and the E6L-144, with capacity for 144 input channels and 64 mix buses + LCR.
All E6L units feature local audio inputs and outputs, AVB Ethernet ports for connecting to the Stage racks, and free slots for DSP-HDX expansion cards. Additional expansion cards can be added to the E6L, such as the MADI-192 card, which provides bidirectional MADI over BNC connectors; the BT-192 Thunderbolt card, which offers recording and playback of a high channel count from compatible Pro Tools systems; and the aforementioned HDX-192 DSP expansion cards, which offer additional processing power for running AAX DSP plug-ins. The third element of the system is the Stage64, a fully modular stage rack with 64 inputs and 32 outputs, featuring AVB over copper and fiber as well as a MADI output. An S6L system can have several Stage64 units whose inputs and outputs can be shared between two or more engines, all with automatic gain compensation, greatly simplifying FOH, monitor and recording setups, for example, without having to go through costly and delicate analog splitters. It is also possible to add an optional DNT-192 Dante card, which offers 16 channels of audio over a Dante network, configurable as 16×0, 8×8 or 0×16, compatible with 48/96/192 kHz and redundant network connections.
Finally, the fourth component of the system, the VENUE software, will have a new, modern, high-visibility look. And since it uses the same VENUE software as all VENUE live sound systems, mix engineers will feel right at home and be able to start mixing with maximum efficiency. In addition, VENUE show files created with earlier systems can be used with the S6L, significantly minimizing setup time.
