Rock keyboard legend Rick Wakeman recently recorded a live version of his 2017 Piano Portraits in front of an audience at Lincoln Cathedral.
Longtime Wakeman studio engineer/producer Erik Jordan used an Allen & Heath dLive system for the project, comprising an S7000 surface with M-Dante card, DM64 MixRack and DX32 Expander, supplied by Tech-Serve Audio Consultants. He found dLive’s ease of use and fast, flexible routing made it the perfect choice for a challenging live recording scenario.
‘I knew from Ian Barfoot, Rick’s FOH engineer and a longstanding dLive user, how flexible and intuitive the system was to use and, although this was my first real dLive experience, it took very little time to become familiar with. We had around 20 mics for Rick’s vocal, piano, audience and ambient pickup and – because the show was filmed for DVD release – I was able to very easily route different mix permutations for the cameras.’
Jordan was also impressed at how the interface options made it simple to set up multitrack recording to various devices and capture high-quality audio: ‘Among the priorities for the project was complete reliability and the ability to use multiple recording devices with minimum fuss,’ he explains. ‘Thanks to the dLive, rather than bringing in racks of additional Pro Tools rigs, we were able to simply run a pair of laptops as backup recorders. And of course, the preamps sound great, so overall it was the ideal choice for what was a pretty high-pressure live recording situation.’
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