Arm’s Length Tours North America With Compact dLive Rig

Arm’s Length, an up-and-coming Emo band from Ontario, recently headlined a tour across the United States and Canada along with labelmates Carly Cosgrove and Ben Quad.

Running front of house for the band is Michael Urbizu, a sound engineer from Florida. Urbizu had done some backfill work on previous tours, mainly working on house consoles. “I did about 15 shows, where every night I was on a new board,” he recalled. When management for Arm’s Length reached out to him, they offered to rent a mic and console package for consistency. “Two colleagues of mine were touring with dLive and had recommended it, so I watched a few videos and said: ‘okay, this thing is the real deal.'”

Urbizu opted for a compact and lightweight dLive CTi1500 control surface, along with a CDM48 MixRack for processing and I/O. “I knew the band’s trailer would already be packed with full sized amps and cabs,” he explained. “I was also conscious of the fact that some of these venues were smaller and there wouldn’t be much room at front of house. Thankfully I could fit into anywhere with that CTi1500 surface.”

To compensate for the CTi1500’s single 12-fader bank, Urbizu made use of dLive’s DCA Spill function – which dynamically updates the fader layout to show channels in a selected DCA group. “I also liked how I can customize the different layers. I kept my groups on the bottom layer along with my FX and master busses.”

Urbizu noted that the extensive built-in processing power of dLive also meant less external gear to move around. “My touring friends often bring in external compressors and FX, but after hearing the dLive’s native processing I put my trust in it.”

Before getting his hands on the physical hardware, Urbizu familiarized himself with the console’s interface and prepared his show file using the free dLive Director software and tutorial videos online. “I got some great ideas from tutorials and interview videos with engineers,” he recalled. “When I actually got to use the mixer, I tried out as many different compressors as I could during sound check to see which ones I liked.” After mixing a few shows, Urbizu felt fully comfortable with the dLive workflow. “I started to really dial in the mix at that point.”

Urbizu was very impressed with the DEEP compressor selection on dLive, including the Opto and Opttronik analog emulations. “I also liked using the Mighty compressor on my guitars,” he noted. “I loved the experience of being able to pick and choose exactly what processing I liked on each channel, and just the overall customization of the board. I hope to take it out again on my next tour.”