Having headlined his own European tour earlier this year, British singer-songwriter Jamie Lawson is back on the road supporting Ed Sheeran on stadium shows across the UK and Europe. The gigs see him showcasing songs from his latest album, Happy Accidents, released on Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records label.

For both the headline and support tours, Lawson’s FOH engineer Rob Simpson (NUB Sound) opted for Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing systems, which he describes as having ‘unique clarity and headroom – and the best ergonomics in the business.’

The arena shows see Simpson behind a dLive S3000 surface (with Waves v3 audio networking card) at FOH, in conjunction with a DM48 MixRack. The same MixRack model is used by engineer Mark Ellis for monitoring, with a dLive S5000 surface fitted with M-Dante card for virtual soundchecks and recording. FOH and monitor systems are linked via an Allen & Heath gigaACE networking card to allow transport of both audio and control over Ethernet via standard Cat cables.

‘I first toured with dLive in January 2016, ‘and I loved it straight away’ Simpson explains. ‘It’s an incredibly good-sounding system and the flexibility is unmatched, allowing you to lay out the surface exactly as you want to. We have both dLive surfaces networked together, allowing each to see both MixRacks on the network and we love the ability to pick and choose which surface is used at the FOH and mons positions with just a push of a button. That gives us total peace of mind in terms of redundancy.

‘I’m running the S3000 at FOH for Jamie on the Ed Sheeran tour primarily because of its smaller footprint – it means I’m not in anyone’s way which really helps on a tour of this scale. But I still have enough faders and control with the S3000 surface and I’m running a Mac Mini and screen on the network, controlling my system using Allen & Heath’s Director software, which effectively gives me a second screen and a second console. I often leave my FX parameters up on this screen and I can also use this to hop on to the monitor console if need be for whatever reason. It’s a very cool set-up.’

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