Palace Caps Revival with a New Pair of Consoles

St. Paul, MN (December 1, 2025)—The Palace Theatre, renovated as a live music venue in 2017, recently capped off a nearly decade-long revival with a new pair of DiGiCo Quantum225 consoles

After being outfitted with a new L-Acoustics K2 P.A. system in 2017, the Palace Theatre has now added DiGiCo Quantum225 consoles at front of house and monitors. Both were sold through and installed by local integrator and rental vendor Allied Productions & Sales. The 2,500-capacity venue is co-managed and co-operated by hometown First Avenue Productions and Chicago-based Jam Productions.

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After nursing the venue’s nearly decade-old consoles along for years, Randy Hawkins, head audio engineer/A1 at the Palace, says the arrival of the new DiGiCo desks has been “a game-changer here. I’ve been touring with a 225 with the band Atmosphere for over three years now and I love it, and it’s the perfect choice for this venue. The thinking had originally been to go with no consoles at all, since so many artists tour with their own. But more and more of them tour with DiGiCo, or are at least very familiar with the DiGiCo worksurface. So by having that here, ready for them to plug their files into, we’re really building the model for the future of touring,” at a time when costs and logistics are paramount, he believes.

Hawkins says choosing the same console for both FOH and monitors further supports that approach. “The DiGiCo worksurface is instantly familiar to the majority of touring engineers out there,” he says confidently. “Very few need any tutorial on them, and most visiting engineers will just plug in their files and go.”

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Like other engineers, Hawkins, who says he’ll mix the occasional opening act at the venue each week, is a fan of the Quantum’s processing. “I enjoy the Spice Rack the most, though Mustard is cool, too,” he says. “When you factor those in, you realize that this was a massive upgrade for the room’s sound, and the consoles bring huge new firepower with them. Plus, First Avenue, our sister venue, also has Quantum225 consoles, so what we’ve done is built a Quantum ecosystem between them, one that also has L-Acoustics sound systems in both—L2 at First Avenue and K2 here.