Securing a place at hip-hop’s top table with 2021’s We’re All Alone in This Together (WAAITT) album, British-Nigerian rapper Dave took to the road for a world tour that included12 UK arena shows in early 2022. For this sold-out UK leg of the outing, engineer Charles Bidwell returned to the FOH hot seat for his eighth tour with the rapper.

‘The Allen & Heath dLive has been with us since 2018, the Surface and MixRacks have been scaling up to match the show’s requirements,’ he explains. ‘We’re currently touring a full band, BVs, playback, featured artists and Dave who raps, sings, plays guitar and piano.’

For the increased demands of the WAAITT tour, Bidwell opted for a dLive system centred on a S7000 Surface partnered with a DM64 MixRack. Additionally, Dante, AES and fibreAce cards facilitate multitracking, virtual soundchecks, PA feed and to accommodate >100m fibre runs at arenas.

The S7000 is the largest control Surface in A&H’s dLive family, offering 216 assignable fader strips via six layers of 36 faders. A pair of 12-inch capacitive touchscreens combine with the Harmony UI to provide fast workflow. Audio is handled by the 96kHz XCVI processing core in the MixRack, delivering 128 input processing channels, a configurable 64-bus architecture and ultra-low 0.7ms latency. All input and bus channels benefit from Deep processing, offering studio-grade emulations of classic hardware with no added latency or phase complications.

‘The harmonics added by the Deep preamp emulations allow me to implement sensible gain structure and then add warmth, drive and squish,’ Bidwell says. ‘The vast Deep compressor library allows me to pair inputs with a specific compressor that improves dynamic response, depth and tonality.

‘The new Deep Source Expander on vocal mics is included in my scene recall so I can adjust the threshold depending on stage location,’ he adds. ‘Dave spends four songs on the B-Stage in front of 32 d&b GSL loudspeakers running at 105dB – this unit has saved my vegan bacon a few times now.

Delivering the sound

The tour’s two nights at London’s Virgin Media 02 arena also saw d&b’s SL-Series fielded as the FOH PA System.

Bidwell has long relied on d&b audiotechnik to deliver for arena shows, and this time he opted for 16 GSL12 line arrays for the main hangs, with 14 KSL12 loudspeakers for sides, and front fill handled by a sextet of Y10P point source loudspeakers. Twenty SL-Subs handled the lows required for Dave’s hip-hop stylings, and a further eight KSL loudspeakers made up each of three delay hangs to provide ample coverage for the large-capacity. The d&b inventory for the tour was supplied by d&b partner SSE Audio, part of Solotech.

‘There’s an awful lot happening on-stage during this show,’ explains Bidwell, ‘Dave, who raps, sings, plays piano and now guitar, a live band that consists of drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and six backing vocalists. All supported by 16 channels of playback and enormous video wall interludes.’

‘I need to glue all of these musical elements together into a show that flows perfectly from track to track and then make sure that Dave’s vocal is placed front-and-centre. With the SL-Series, there’s a real sonic transparency out of the box and the workflow is fantastic, so it makes a tour of this scale as straightforward as possible,’ Bidwell says.

‘ArrayCalc simulation and the R1 remote control software are extremely powerful and flexible tools. The PA flyers were using the ArrayCalc Viewer app on iPhone to quickly reference the ArrayCalc design specifications on the fly. It works brilliantly, so once everything is designed correctly in ArrayCalc, when you unmute the SL-Series you’re immediately presented with the clarity and raging power that d&b is known for.’

The ArrayCalc Viewer app provides data such as splay angle, amplifier channel ID and cabling information, flying frame height and the height of the lowest edge, frame angle, horizontal aiming, Pickpoints, weight and load status. Any change to the system design can be distributed to each user immediately, ensuring an efficient and user friendly approach to rigging, and supporting the system setup as a whole.

‘The integration of the system and the software is key to delivering the kind of consistency we need on a tour of this scale,’ Bidwell continues. ‘It’s one thing being able to get one venue to sound great, particularly if you’re doing multiple nights there. But to be able to move around the country and know that the experience you’re giving the audience doesn’t change is really important. I trust the SL-Series to deliver and that’s a huge thing – there’s so much else going on that being completely confident in the system I’m using is crucial.’

The logistics of an arena tour mean that the practicalities of rigging and flying the PA are also an important consideration. ‘The fact that you get so much power from a relatively compact form factor with the GSL boxes makes them very tour-friendly,’ says system tech Rich Kemp. ‘It’s pretty remarkable really. We could forklift them on and off the trucks with no messing around and were often the first department finished and ready to go.

‘We ran the GSLs in compression mode and the arrays were very quick to get set and fly. They go up very fast, which is always really welcome on big tours like this where there’s so much going on at each venue.’

The audience are there to hear every detail with impact, so clarity and headroom from the PA is paramount,’ Bidwell says. ‘I want everyone to leave having understood every bar – Dave’s lyrical content, word play and delivery is world class, so both audience and artist deserve that. We currently  have UK Reading, Leeds, Longitude & Wireless headline slots this summer,’ Bidwell concludes. ‘It’s a huge year for Dave.’