Volume.com has been making waves in the event industry, capturing and livestreaming everything from intimate bedroom performances, to podcasts, to large-scale festivals. Central to their success is Chris Austin, a seasoned audio engineer with a keen ear for translating the energy of live music to the digital realm. His recent weapon of choice has been Allen & Heath’s Avantis Solo.
Austin, who has worked with renowned artists like Tyler Childers and Government Mule, emphasizes the importance of delivering a high-quality listening experience for at-home audiences. “You want to make sure that every performance sounds great, because that’s that’s the main reason people are tuning in,” he explains. Avantis Solo, with its compact size and powerful feature set, has become his indispensable tool for achieving this goal.
One of the key advantages of Avantis Solo is its adaptability. Austin often finds himself relegated to cramped “video villages” separate from the dedicated front-of-house area. The Solo’s compact design allows him to seamlessly integrate into these tight spaces without sacrificing functionality. “It doesn’t take up a whole lot of space – I take up maybe one seat in the audience and we’re good to go,” he quips.
But the Solo’s true power lies in its intuitive workflow. Austin praises its user-friendly interface, which draws heavily from the familiar layout of other Allen & Heath digital mixers. This allows him to work quickly and efficiently, especially in situations where he has limited time to dial in a mix. “It’s very intuitive. I almost felt like I was a part of the development process,” he says, highlighting the console’s design. The touchscreen interface, with its assignable rotaries and faders, further streamlines his workflow, allowing him to make precise adjustments on the fly.
Beyond its ease of use, the Avantis Solo boasts a robust suite of onboard effects and processing, including reverbs, delays, and compressors, all of which meet Austin’s exacting standards. He specifically sought out the optional dPack upgrade for its DEEP processing plugins, particularly the multiband compressor, which he uses to tame excessive highs and lows common in live mixes intended for large venues, tailoring the sound specifically for streaming. “A lot of highs and lows that are transmitted to broadcast don’t need to be there,” he states. “It makes sense in the room, but they need to be adjusted for a stream.”
Whether he’s receiving a stereo feed from the front-of-house console or tapping into a full Dante network for individual channel control, Austin relies on the Avantis Solo to deliver a polished, immersive audio experience to Volume.comviewers. He also uses the Solo’s built-in mic preamps to incorporate ambient room microphones into his mixes, capturing the energy of the live crowd for the home audience.
In a world where live streaming has become an integral part of music consumption, the Allen & Heath Avantis Solo emerges as the ultimate companion for engineers like Chris Austin. Its compact size, intuitive workflow, and powerful processing capabilities empower him to translate the raw energy of live performance into a captivating digital experience for audiences worldwide.
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