FOH engineer Rob Drayton was introduced to Allen & Heath’s dLive series at a tradeshow a few years ago, and was immediately drawn to its power and simple workflow. He later got some hands-on experience with Allen & Heath’s SQ and Avantis series mixers, and was impressed by how easy it was to produce a good sounding mix.
When it came time for Drayton to eventually go on a Christian songwriters and worship leaders’ tour with Grammy Award-winning artists Bryan and Katie Torwalt, he chose the dLive, given that a CTi1500 surface would give them a small form factor without compromising on processing capabilities. ‘I need something that has the capacity to do both FOH and monitors, but that I can also load in myself without needing a second person,’ he says.
The final system for the tour included the lightweight 19-inch titanium rack-mountable CTi1500 dLive surface, along with a DM48 MixRack and several wireless systems in a single rack case that could easily be transported. ‘I could roll the whole thing in, pop the cover off, run one cable, and that was it,’ said Drayton. ‘I enjoyed challenging the status quo of larger consoles, this was simple and sounded great.’ The CTi1500 also housed a Dante card that allowed for easy multitrack recording of every performance, as well as virtual soundcheck playback.
Drayton notes that, despite all the processing capabilities he had at his fingertips with the 96kHz dLive FPGA, he didn’t need to tweak the channels very much to get the sound he wanted: ‘On other desks, there’s so much (channel processing) that I need to do. With dLive, it just sounded quite good as it was.'
‘With Deep processing like the Bus Compressor and Source Expander, and tools like Dyn8 in the desk, more and more engineers are grabbing a dLive and hitting the road while their outboard gear stays behind,’ adds Allen & Heath USA Marketing Director Jeff Hawley. ‘We’re witnessing a new trend in the industry, and the dLive CTi1500 is leading the way.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
