US PA specialist Rat Sound has purchased an Allen & Heath dLive system, which has gone directly to work on a nationwide tour by LA-based indie band, Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros (ESMZ).

 Comprising a dLive S5000 control surface and DM64 MixRack, Rat Sound’s dLive system is managing FOH and recording duties.



Formed by Alex Ebert in 2007, ESMZ play a wide range of original music that draws from folk, rock, gospel and psychedelic roots, and are promoting their newly released album, PersonA. The tour is visiting venues ranging from smaller ‘underplay’ houses to larger auditoriums.

FOH engineer Steve Taylor says ESMZ’s ten members are multi-talented artists who move from one instrument to another, often in the same song, resulting in as many as 60 mic and direct sources in the FOH mix. In many venues, the band’s stage is crowded and stage level is high, so even close-miked instruments pick up unwanted sounds making it difficult to separate individual instruments or voices in the mix. Taylor uses the dLive system to meet these challenges in creative ways that free the band to entertain audiences with their unique style of music.

For each of ESMZ’s songs, he sets up a dLive ‘scene’, assigning sources to faders and customising EQ and effects for that song’s mix of instruments and voices. He tunes the dLive’s input channel gates to trigger on the frequency range of individual instruments and voices. Then, he pans sources and uses small amounts of delay to create space and width in the mix.

Taylor records ESMZ concerts to a laptop in multitrack via the dLive’s Dante card and in stereo to a thumb drive. He saves the entire dLive configuration to another thumb drive as a backup.

ESMZ monitor engineer Jerry Lopez has also switched to a dLive S5000 surface with a DM64 MixRack as well while on tour. He creates as many as 32 mixes sending them to in-ear monitors, side fill and wedge monitors on the stage: ‘The beauty of the dLive is I can put the band’s input list wherever I want it on the surface and the dLive has all the features I need to create my own work flow,’ he says.

Lopez likes the dLive’s ‘English’ preamps and Taylor says the mixer is ‘cleaner and more defined’ than other digital mixers he has used. Both engineers found the dLive easy to learn and love the drag-and-drop set-up screens. Taylor says this is ‘early in the game’ for ESMZ and adds, ‘The dLive will help us achieve Alex’s goal of moving the band to the next level for sound and professionalism.’