Indian PA company Stagecraft, recently put its new dLive digital mixing system through its paces at the huge Dildar Dandiya dance festival, held in the city of Gujarat in Surat, known as Land of the Festivals.
Organised by Coconut Events, the ten-day festival was staged in the Golden Memories Dome, and attracted 12,000 visitors. Renowned Indian folk singers, Kirtidan Gadhvi, Nisha Barot and Jetal Soni, performed every day.
The festival organisers gave pro rental company Stagecraft a challenging brief. Stagecraft had recently purchased a second dLive system from Allen & Heath’s distributor, Sun Infonet, comprising the flagship S7000 Surface with DM64 MixRack, to join its existing S3000/DM48 system. The S7000/DM64 system was selected as the FOH and monitor mixer for the festival, managing a spectrum of instruments including eight dhols (double-headed drums), six drums, five floor drums, a kick drum, Indian acoustic percussions, bass, guitar, banjo, saxophone, clarinet, melodica, and keyboards, totalling 64 inputs and 27 outputs.
The MixRack was positioned on stage, connected to the Surface at FOH and a laptop running the dLive Director app, which was used as a monitor mixer. ‘dLive worked flawlessly for ten consecutive days,’ says Stagecraft Systems Engineer and Director, Pintu. ‘The flexibility of the dLive surface and complete open architecture allowed me to customise my own surface. The built in features, such as dynamic EQs, multi-band compressor and subharmonic synth, made the job easier, and I could feel and hear each and every instrument. dLive has become my default console for any event.’
