The Anthem opened in 2017 with a mission: bring a purpose-built, mid-sized music venue—able to host arena-level artists that want a smaller, more intimate space in which to connect with fans, but that can still hold plenty of them—to the nation’s capital. The 57,000-square-foot, $60-million venue accommodating 2,500 to 6,000 patrons for as many as two shows a night needed top-tier technology from day one, and they found that in a pair of DiGiCo SD12 consoles, which served the venue for hundreds of shows since then.
When it became clear that it was time for a technology update, independent concert promotion and production company I.M.P., which owns The Anthem, the 9:30 Club, and other venues in the area, decided to stick with a good thing: after moving the original SD12 desks to the famed 1,200-capacity 9:30 Club—named the number one nightclub by Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Pollstar more than any other venue in the country—The Anthem is now home to new pair of DiGiCo SD12-96 consoles at front of house and monitors, with expanded channel count and additional features that will help keep The Anthem a highly flexible and attractive venue. The new consoles, like their predecessors, were sourced and sold through Eighth Day Sound, a Clair Global brand.
Drew Kot, Head of Audio for I.M.P., says keeping the venue a DiGiCo house consistently sends a positive signal to touring artists, as does the venue’s choice of a d&b audiotechnik J-series line array system, ready for any contract rider out there. “The SD12-96 has the additional inputs, but it’s also about the features that make it so flexible,” he says. “Visiting engineers who might not be familiar with DiGiCo—believe it or not, there still are a few!—like having the extra screen, as well as the extra set of dedicated rotaries. It just really makes it easy and flexible. There’s even been times where I’ve set them up on half the console on really hectic short-time days and we just use the other half, holding the next scene until we need it for a second act. It really just provides us that extra flexibility as a house console.”
Touring artists of the caliber of most of The Anthem’s shows will often bring their own FOH consoles, but many of those visiting shows are also one-off fly dates and, says Kot, their engineers are delighted when they learn there’s a DiGiCo waiting for them at the venue. “A lot of shows like that do have expectations of the house console, and they’re pretty excited when they find out it’s an SD12-96,” he says.
There’s plenty in that box waiting for them, too. “It was a big step up for us,” he says. “Even more than the input additional channels was the extra 12 aux buses and group buses. Just that extra processing power is huge. You can run out of those buses pretty quickly, once you start using stereo groups, so that kind of power is very useful for us.”
Kot also cites the SD12’s processing noting the dynamic EQs and DigiTube on every channel and bus. “Everyone here swears by ’em,” he laughs. As important is the SD12’s configurability, allowing it to adapt to different types of events. “It’s not just music shows,” he says. “We’ve been doing a lot of private events recently, so we need a console that’s flexible and can bounce back and forth between all types of presentations.”
Meanwhile, those “older” SD12 consoles now at the 9:30 Club are continuing to provide enormous value and ROI for I.M.P. “That was also a big step up for that venue,” he says. noting that they replaced an even older DiGiCo SD8 desk there. “Something more modern and updated has been a huge upgrade. It was just time for something refreshed and also smaller. The SD8 is kind of big, and space at front of house at the 9:30 Club is at a premium, especially because we do double shows there. So we have the late show headliner set up early, and then we have early show headliner set up before that, so we could have as many as three consoles in there, if the support act brought a desk. So we need to free up as much space as possible, and the SD12 is the perfect combination of power and a smaller footprint. We’re keeping it all DiGiCo, and it just gets better every time.”
For more information on The Anthem and the 9:30 Club, visit www.theanthemdc.com and www.930.com. Eighth Day Sound can be found online at www.8thdaysound.com.
