Cumulus NYC’s “Stage 17”, a live performance and broadcast studio at Cumulus’s New York City cluster (WABC, WPLJ, WNSH, WNBM), uses an Allen & Heath GLD-80 Digital Mixing System at FOH for its live audience mix, another GLD-80 to provide a stereo broadcast mix and six Allen & Heath ME-1 Personal Mixing Systems for on-stage artist monitoring.
With its new audio systems, Stage 17 has hosted more than 100 live music broadcasts, interviews, fund raisers and other special events since March of 2017 with celebrities like Oliver Stone, Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert and Gavin DeGraw.
Director of Engineering Dan Hirschl says, “Our goal for Stage 17 was to convert a large conference room into a live performance studio for use by the multiple Cumulus stations here in New York for a variety of events.” Regarding the mixer choice for Stage 17, Hirschl says he had helped a colleague set up a Qu-16, a smaller Allen & Heath digital mixer. He noted, “It was very intuitive. I was able to figure it out and make it happen within fifteen minutes. Also, it didn’t take a lot of work to get his mic sounding the way it should for broadcast. So, that experience was part of the reason we chose the GLD-80s for Stage 17. And I wanted the GLD’s routing ability and expansion options.”
During events, WPLJ engineers make good use of the GLD-80’s digital features. “We’ve had days when there were multiple artists on the stage and we were able to uses scenes to go seamlessly from show to show and that’s been really good for us,” said Hirschl. “And, we’re using the GLD’s EQ, compression and reverb all the time.” Stage 17’s FOH GLD-80 also feeds six Allen & Heath ME-1 Personal Mixing Systems used for artist headphone monitoring and the room is equipped with wedge monitors which are mixed from FOH.
Dante cards in the two GLD-80s feed a split from the FOH mixer to the broadcast mixer in a separate studio. “With the GLD-80s, everybody who’s worked at FOH knows how the console works and can easily shift gears to the broadcast mix. That’s really helpful,” said Hirschl. For some events, WABC, WPLJ, Nash FM and Radio 103.9 feed its stereo broadcast mix to as many as 50 markets through Westwood One while streaming an audio plus video program to the applicable website.
Hirschl commented, “The GLD 80 has been a solid and reliable performer for us on a daily basis at one of radio’s most active performance rooms. We are very pleased with Allen & Heath under the hood for mixing live music at Stage 17.”
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