California-based audio engineer Jerry Lopez has been a dLive user since 2015. Over time, his appreciation for the Allen & Heath flagship has continued to grow. He now runs a rental and production house with several dLives called Jerry Rig Audio & Creative Solutions. “I own eight dLive systems,” proclaimed Lopez. “Allen & Heath really does things right, in terms of constantly updating with new features.”
Currently, Lopez is taking dLive on tour with Latin Grammy award-winning singer/songwriter Carla Morrison. “Thanks to dLive’s MCA feature, I am able to run both front of house and monitors for Carla with my compact CTi1500 control surface” explained Lopez. “I simply set up spills so that I can minimize the amount of faders required on my top layer.”
Lopez also brings along a DM0 dLive Mixrack, which handles the system’s full 128-channel 96kHz FPGA processing, and 4 DX168s stageboxes for distributed I/O across the stage. “The first stagebox is for drums,” noted Lopez. “I use a second one for in-ears, and another for wireless.” The DX stageboxes each provide 16 dLive mic preamps and 8 line outputs in a portable form factor, and can also be mounted in a standard 19” rack.
In terms of processing, Lopez noted that he makes full use of dLive’s DEEP emulations on tour. “I use preamp models for warmth and coloration on every single mic channel. I also use the OptTronik compressor on every channel.” For his main mix, Lopez uses the new Bus Compressor, which was added in dLive Firmware V1.9. The DEEP Bus compressor model brings the sound of a fabled VCA bus compressor into dLive – perfect for adding sonic cohesion and glue to mix and sub-groups.
Lopez also has a 128-channel 96kHz Waves module, which he uses solely for multitracking and Virtual Soundcheck. “I see no need to complicate things with an external plugin server,” he explained. “With all the dLive processing available to me. I prefer having things compact. I can set everything up quickly and have fun mixing without needing a whole crew.”
