etech Events Integrates 21 Allen & Heath Qu-16s Into Their AV Systems

	etech Events's Allen & Heath Qu-16 on the job.

Founded in 1996 as an internet technology company and now evolved into a full service event technology integrator, etech Events was ready to go 100% digital for its corporate events. "My biggest need was for reliability and simplicity -- the Qu-16 is not intimidating- but if we need more technology the Qu-16 has it all, and more," says Josh Fillingim, technical lead for etech.

"Our goal is for full digital breakout rooms with our corporate clients. This way no matter what format they bring their content in, I can put it up on the screens and broadcast their audio to the room with no problems," he adds.

With clients ranging from Google to Hewlett Packard to Blackberry and Marketo, etech's event schedule is full year round.

Having positioned their offerings as full service, as opposed to simply rental, the company has grown into a nationwide player in the market. And with this comes certain challenges, particularly when it comes to size of equipment. After all, freight costs have not exactly leveled off in recent years. "We used to send a bigger board out with a separate equalizer and compressor, the new Qu-16 takes up one fifth of the space. Plus, with the one-third octave EQ and compressors on every channel line, patching is eliminated. Our lighting guy is often left to keep an eye on the audio mixer, he really loves the RTA (real time analyzer) feature, he see's a red light and knows exactly which fader to bring down. And the four channel parametric is huge!" states Fillingim. No small wonder then that etech Events has acquired 21 Qu-16s, with plans to acquire the larger Qu-24 and Qu-32 channel models as well.

For Jeremy Kearns, director of operations, the Qu series from Allen & Heath fits seamlessly into the core of etech's branding. "We rent and deliver a service, not just gear," he says, adding "we can have 20 to 50 rooms at an event, our tech people needed to have the same gear in every room, gear that is reliable, but also feature rich and simple to operate." One feature of the Qu series that both Kearns and Fillingim identify as big with their customers is the built in audio recorder in the consoles.

As Kearns relates, "the built in recorder saves us so much editing time with its stop and start feature. Our clients now get their audio recording right after the event -- on site."

There is one feature that both Kearns and Fillingim touted about the Qu series from Allen & Heath -- the form factor. "Many of the industry standard mixing consoles are designed with no concern for the person trying to read the display," says Fillingim. "Allen & Heath obviously put some thought and consideration in to this challenge, and have come up with a really easy to read solution," he shares. "In the past, it was wads of gaffer's tape or two chairs stacked to make a console's display readable, Qu series took care of this problem." When Fortune 500 to Fortune 50 clients rely on a vendor's solutions, the last thing that vendor wants is for them to notice any guerilla-style or makeshift solutions at their events. According to these two AV event industry experts, the Qu-16 series from Allen & Heath eliminates any appearance or sound short of professional.