Jersey Opera House purchases DiGiCo Quantum 338T for newly refurbished venue

The 125-year-old Jersey Opera House (JOH) recently benefited from a 12-million-pound refurbishment, reopening after a five-year hiatus with a gala performance in October 2025. In the last few months, the JOH has reestablished itself as an outstanding live venue, delivering sellout performances from greats like Gilbert O’Sullivan, to children’s favourites like Horrible Histories, with dance, comedy and cinema also thrown in. Technical Manager, Chris Wink, explains how a generous benefactor donation for equipment facilitated the purchase of a brand-new Quantum 338T, supplied by Stage Electrics, adding to their existing DiGiCo SD9 and securing the future purchase of a Quantum 112.

“We were lucky enough to benefit from huge generosity, so we now have a fantastic Quantum 338T and are developing a cutting edge d&b loudspeaker system,” he expands. “The Quantum 338T will position us perfectly as we begin to produce more work in-house and is a natural fit for the calibre of artists that visit the JOH. We are really investing in equipment and people since our building project finished. Many of our visiting shows already use DiGiCo, so the Q338T helps with our workflow, making setups much easier.”

In a five year long, government funded construction project, the entire structure of JOH has been upgraded and repaired. The final upgrades were to the theatrical equipment, including full lighting and sound systems. The Quantum 338T was chosen thanks to its trio of 17-inch, high brightness screens and large console surface area. With 156 input channels, 72 busses and a 36 x 36 matrix, the Quantum 338T is built for complex shows and is exactly what JOH needs.

“The Opera House started 1900 as a replacement for the Theatre Royal,” Wink continues. “Over the years it has had many refurbishments, but in 1997 it was taken back to its original form, and we have updated and safeguarded that work. It’s a beautiful, historical building, but we are looking to the future with modern works being commissioned, including a brand-new opera, pantomime and dance. The Quantum 338T is proving essential because of our varied workflow and the speed at which we change shows.”

The DiGiCo T software upgrades the standard Quantum 338 with a variety of added features, including increasing the matrix from 24 to 36 with individual Nodal delays and aliases on each channel. When coupled with the ultra-flexible 32bit SD cards and an Optocore loop, Wink gains a level of agility that has enabled him and his team to deliver crystal clear sound, regardless of the genre of the show. As he continues, it is the ability to make the racks whatever you need them to be that makes the DiGiCo ecosystem so appealing.

“The SD-Racks being able to be whatever you need, wherever you need it, via hot-swapping cards is essential,” he continues. “We also use Orange Boxes within the system, once again adding more flexibility, certainly for Dante inputs and outputs, and personal monitoring requirements. Because of the unique nature of our venue, we often end up taking multi-track recordings, too. Software wise, we’ve really noticed the impact that Mustard and Chilli processing has, it felt like a big change from our SD9.”

With a varied repertoire it is often the shows that need the most subtle reinforcement that require the most care. For his next project Wink is focusing on subtle reinforcement, where the clarity of the JOH DiGiCo and d&b combination will subtly incorporate sound effects and musical elements in a way that could not be achieved with a different combination of equipment.

“The quality of the preamps in the 32-bit cards delivers a level of finesse that is not present with other brands,” Wink concludes. “It's about having a system that's powerful and punchy enough to deal with any rock or pop artists that come over, but also be quiet and clean enough to deal with the subtle reinforcements of a spoken word play, or an opera. There are times where you need a sledgehammer and there are times that just need a little file, and the DiGiCo Quantum 338T does everything!”