Among the highlights of 2017’s Glastonbury were Chic and Nile Rodgers, who took to the Pyramid Stage using Allen & Heath dLive S Class mixing systems.
Tech Production Manager and FOH engineer John Ryan, used a S7000 Surface linked by FibreACE to an onstage DM48 MixRack, while monitor engineer Marco Dellatorre used a S7000 and DM48 with Madi for recording.
‘From the first moment I turned it on, I became friends with dLive,’ says Ryan, who has been mixing for Nile Rodgers and Chic for the past 13 years. ‘The system proves to be fast and easy to set up and have you ready to go on the fly, something that is quite frequent during festival shows where you are almost never allowed a soundcheck.
‘The basic features are easy to spot on the dLive surface – quick assignable function buttons and pots where you would expect them to be, 36 totally assignable faders divided into three banks on five layers, amazingly great-sounding plug-ins, a user-friendly menu and everything you need to know for any selected channel is clearly displayed on the two touch screens. A Help button is available for first-time users.
Dragging and dropping channel strip assignments to your surface is quick, reliable and definitely one of the most useful features when organising your layers, especially when you want to keep specific channels right on top, stored in each song of your set list, without the need for hunting down a channel that is originally assigned to a lower layer. The superb sound quality, processing and nearly non-existent latency almost makes you think you’re working on an analogue desk. The dLive is now on our production rider as my preferred FOH mixer.’
‘I have been using digital desks for many years, and I think I can summarise my experience with dLive in three words – easy, compact, connections,’ says Dellatorre. You only need two minutes to scan and remember all the buttons/knobs on the surface, and then you can mix. Everything you need is there in a small frame – this is very important for monitor engineers.
‘We’re always on the run looking after the musicians, and it’s very helpful to have, and be able to reach, all of the features. Also, I really love the fact that you can switch network protocols just like a matrix dot-to-dot, and this is without using surface processing. You simply plug in the cards you need, cross patch and it’s done. I not think there’s any other brand on the market that allows you to do this. Finally, oh yes, the sound in amazing.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
