Glensound Symphony – Musicians’ Monitoring & Microphone Amplifier Glensound

The Symphony musicians’ audio monitoring and microphone amplifier was originally designed to meet the requirements of the Il Novecento Orchestra. They had been using a similar analogue monitoring system for many years and when they updated their production mixer to a Dante enabled desk they naturally wanted to encompass and embrace the advantages of the network audio system to include their monitoring and musical instrument pre amplifiers. The shape and feature set of the Symphony came from the customer’s many years of experience from within the orchestral music industry. The simple controls for the musicians, the microphone amplifier setup hidden away from the musicians, the ability to mount the Symphony on a microphone stand and a clean blank audience facing side of the box were all key required features. Being a high caliber audio environment naturally the microphone amplifiers and monitoring circuits had to be the best available, which was made possible because of Glensound’s many years of experience in broadcast audio.

Features:

• Dante / AES67 compatible
• Monitoring for 2 musicians
• 2 x high spec microphone amplifiers
• Mounts on a microphone stand
• Plain rear view facing audience
• 3 x stereo monitoring inputs
• 2 x local instrument monitoring circuits
• Individual headphone volume controls for each musician
• Originally designed for an Orchestra
• Talback mic on front panel
• Push To Talk (PTT) switch
• LCD dispaly for setup of gains etc
• Display & setup controls on floor facing side to prevent use by musicians
• The Symphony is designed to be mounted on a microphone stand and placed between 2 musicians.

Each musician has a set of monitoring controls on an ergonomically shaped sloping front panel, with a headphone monitoring output jack conveniently placed at the bottom of the controls. The monitoring controls allow each musician to adjust the volume of 3 incoming stereo audio mixes from the Dante network, allowing them to monitor their preferred mix at a level that they are happy with. Each musician is also provided with an instrument headphone volume control, so they can adjust the level of their own instrument in their own ears. A panning control is also provided for the instrument in case they only wish to monitor their own instrument in one ear or of centre. Finally an overall volume control is provided for each musician to allow one single control to adjust the overall volume of the whole mix.

On the front panel mounted centrally between the 2 sets of monitoring controls and at the top of the panel is a talkback microphone, at the bottom of the panel and within easy reach of each musician is a push to talk (PTT) switch that turns the talkback microphone on. This talkback circuit is very useful for communications between the musicians and sound control room.

The bottom panel conatins the 2 microphone inputs, 1 on each side of the unit allowing the microphone cable to enter the box in a tidy and organised way. The panel also contains simple engineering setup controls to adjust the microphone input gain, turn phantom power on/ off and also turn the internal compressor limiter circuit on/off. Connections to the Dante/ AES67 network are also located on the bottom panel, so like the microphone cables the newtork cables can easily be routed safely down the microphone stand.

There are 2 Dante network interfaces allowing a fully redundant netowrk to be set up with primary and secondary Dante networks. Both of these interfaces are on Neutrik Ethercon connectors and both accept Power Over Ethernet (PoE).