American rock band PVRIS – originally Paris – has performed at Warped Tour, Coachella and other top-tier festivals and tours around the world. Veteran PVRIS FOH engineer and production manager Connor Hawkins selected the Allen & Heath dLive Digital Mixing System to support the band on the road after an extensive series of trials with consoles from multiple manufacturers.
‘With only two or three days rehearsal, I was able to get fully up and running and comfortable with dLive,’ he reports. ‘It reminds me of the stuff that I like about other desks, but somehow it is even better. One of the huge dLive “wins” is the flexibility of putting anything anywhere at any time. It was easy to move right in and do what I needed to do.
‘I’ve also always been a huge advocate of virtual soundcheck, and it’s just so easy on the dLive compared to other desks. It’s so smooth to jump to the I/O and click from stage to virtual that I’ve really gotten cosy with the virtual soundcheck flow. Funny enough, the band doesn’t typically sound check anymore, they often come out in the evening and do the show and trust that we’ve got everything dialled in.’
The first series of PVRIS dLive shows used a 28-fader S5000 Control Surface, but Hawkins eventually scaled down and selected the more compact 12-fader C1500: ‘We tried out a number of things on tour and it was mind-blowing how powerful and compact the Allen & Heath C1500 was,’ he says. ‘It gave us the processing power and inputs/outputs we need in such a small package.’
Paired with a DM64 MixRack, the system provides 128 input channels and 64 mix outputs with full processing, all accessible via a rackmount control surface sporting a 12-inch capacitive touchscreen. Powered by the Allen & Heath XCVI processing core, all dLive Digital Mixing System configurations operate at 96kHz with variable bit-depth and a 96-bit accumulator and virtually infinite mix headroom.
‘I’ve been wanting to mix in 96kHz for a long time. Now, right out of the box, I’m there.’ Hawkins notes. ‘Every input I want, with my 55 channels and two drum kits and all of this crazy stuff going on – and no problems at all.
‘With other consoles, I also felt like I had to add complexity with plug-ins and calculate and compensate for latency, but this is very intuitive and very straightforward. The other desks I considered would have required me to completely rethink the way I mix. Ultimately, I realised I’d just have a better time on the dLive.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
