An independent Christian rock group based in Kentucky, the Jason Lovins Band has been touring houses of worship and college campus ministries consistently since its formation in 2001. ‘We’re on the road about 40 weeks a year,’ says the band’s Production Manager and sound engineer Chris Music. ‘It’s a big operation.’
The band’s sound mixing is handled by a 64-channel Allen & Heath Avantis console. ‘We’ve loved using the Avantis,’ Music reports. ‘We used to have some external plug-ins included with our touring rig, but the Avantis’ dPack upgrade has eliminated the need for most of those.’
Allen & Heath’s dPack plug-in package brings Deep processing functions from the brand’s flagship dLive series to Avantis consoles. ‘The dPack is where the Avantis shines, for sure – especially the analogue compressor models,’ Music says. ‘I like compressors that can give a channel some character to make it sit differently in the mix.’
Music still keeps a 128-channel Waves card installed in his 96kHz Avantis, both to run some specific plug-ins off a server and to run playback tracks off a computer for virtual soundchecks. The band also employs an Allen & Heath GX4816 stagebox for remote I/O, which features 48 mic preamps and 16 line outputs. An additional DX168 expander is then daisy-chained off the main stagebox, which Music uses to cleanly connect all the drum mics with minimal cabling.
Since switching to Avantis, Music has found his workflow significantly improved. ‘I love the way you can lay out channels flexibly across the many available layers,’ he notes. ‘I don’t like to fit everything on one layer, I like to have things organised so I can page through and access what I need.’
For the monitors, Music sets up a router and multiple iPads running a mix of the free Avantis OneMix and MixPad applications. This allows each member of the band to have control over their own aux output, and eliminates the need for a dedicated monitor engineer. ‘The band likes to be super hands-on,’ Music says. ‘Having them control their own mixes makes things easy for me.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
