Iconic punk rock band, The Professionals, recently reformed for a sold out gig at London’s 100 Club, managed on Allen & Heath’s new dLive digital mixing system. Made up of former members of the Sex Pistols, the gig marked the first time in more than 30 years that the band had appeared, coinciding with Universal’s release of The Complete Professionals CD set.
As space was tight and channel count relatively low, engineer Ben Hammond opted for the smallest hardware from the dLive range – a S3000 surface and DM32 stage rack, fitted with a Dante networking card, to manage FOH, monitors and a multitrack recording of the show. Requirements comprised drums, bass, two guitars, four vocals, four wedge mixes, and stereo and multitrack recording via Dante to Reaper, to be mixed later for a ‘live’ release.
‘I needed to deliver an edgy, driven mix to suit the type of music,’ Hammond explains. ‘dLive is an extremely clean sounding console, and the move to 96kHz processing gives so much more space and headroom, which enabled me to get the sound I was looking for pretty quickly. I tried to keep the mix as open and raw as I could, just using the desk’s brilliant built-in FX, which mean I don’t need to rely on plug-ins or outboard. As usual, I use a lot of sub groups, this came from learning to mix in a tiny venue with very underpowered monitoring, so I was back home here.’
Compression and heavy EQ cuts were done on Groups, so Hammond could retain the maximum level available for the monitors. dLive handles this well due to the number of processing mix channels available, as well as additional FX sends, monitor sends, and matrix outs.
‘The gig ended on a great note, the audience were ecstatic, the band very happy, and looking forward to their next outing,’ Hammond concludes. ‘It was a real honour to work with someone with as much history and impact in music as Paul Cook.’
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