Thriving in the intersection of classical, jazz, pop, electronica and folk musics, Swedish composer, arranger and conductor Hans Ek’s performances involve a symphony orchestra, several vocalists, a three-to-five-piece band and, on occasion, choir.
Bringing these ambitious arrangements to life is no mean feat, so engineers Peter Fredriksson (monitors) from PFL Nordic AB and Hans ‘Surte’ Norin (FOH) from Taking Care of Audio work closely with Ek to handle the technically demanding live shows throughout Scandinavia.
‘We tour around and take our gear to the top-class orchestras here in the Nordics, and we use local PA on-site,’ Fredriksson explains. ‘Over the years we have built up a very neat and specialised [Allen & Heath] dLive mixing set-up for projects like this.’
At the heart of the touring rig are a two lightweight dLive CTi1500 control surfaces, designed to come in under the critical 23kg airline weight limit when flightcased. These are partnered with a pair of compact 128-channel/64-bus DM0 MixRacks. The digital split between systems is handled via Allen & Heath’s proprietary gigaAce protocol, a plug-and-play solution offering ultra-low 52μs latency, with Madi and Waves cards installed for virtual soundcheck and recording.
With so many channels devoted to vocals and classical instruments, where a wide dynamic range is critical, the duo were attracted to Allen & Heath’s Prime input and output technology, an ultra-linear circuit design with 96kHz, 32-bit converters and extended dynamic range. ‘When the Prime preamp modules were released, we had some in for testing’ Fredriksson says. ‘We instantly realised that this would be a real game-changer, especially with high channel counts.’
After a successful evaluation – facilitated by Swedish A&H distributor Benum – PFL Nordic and Taking Care of Audio invested in 14 Prime input cards and two Prime output cards for their four DX32 modular expanders, delivering a total of 112 Prime input channels and 16 Prime output channels for the system. In addition to the Prime outputs, four portable DX012 output expanders are deployed with a mixture of AES and analogue outputs feeding IEMs and stage monitors for Ek and the multitude of performers.
‘I added the ability, via an IP6 remote controller connected to the monitor system, for the conductor [Ek] to mix his own monitors with two separate mixes, one for wedges and one for in-ears’ Fredriksson says. ‘Using the scene recall filter functions to change between two scenes, he can easily switch between the mixes with one button press, and I can take control of his mix if required.’
However, it is the sound quality of the system that has made the biggest impression on him: ‘Having switched over to Prime on over 100 channels, all I can say is, wow,’ he smiles. ‘There’s so much clarity and resolution, the mix almost handles itself.’
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