Sound engineer Jeff Pitt of production company 242 Concepts has been mixing blues rock legend George Thorogood for nearly a quarter century. When it came time to upgrade their touring audio consoles, Pitt and monitor engineer Colten Hyten went through several options before falling for Allen & Heath’s dLive platform during a hands-on demo. “We spent a week going through about twenty five iterations of dLive surfaces, mix engines, and expanders,” recounted Hyten. “That’s what really attracted us to dLive – the fact that there are so many different hardware configuration possibilities, without sacrificing any processing power.”
Thorogood’s current tour with his band The Destroyers is being mixed on two dLive S5000 surfaces, one at front of house and one at monitors, mixed by Hyten. Each surface is paired with its own DM0 MixRack to manage their respective 128 channels of 96kHz processing, and two gigaACE cards handle the digital split between the systems. Off the monitor console’s DM0, Hyten connects multiple DX168 portable I/O boxes on the stage to keep the mic preamps closer to the performers. A DX012 expander adds twelve more line outputs for the band’s in-ear monitors. “We’ve eliminated so much analog cabling,” remarked Hyten. “That’s been a huge thing for us, since CAT5e cables are so easy to run and simple to replace if there is ever a continuity issue.”
“Another feature we like is the ABCD Preamp option,” remarked Pitt. The ABCD feature on dLive allows for the input source of a particular channel strip to be instantly toggled between four different options, allowing for fast changeover to a backup mic or an alternate wireless system as needed. “If our main RF mic goes down, we have a one-touch solution that places our backup right in the same line, so we don’t have to move channels or remix anything.”
Pitt is also a fan of the recently added RTA overlay on channel equalizers. “It lets you really see the frequency response on an individual channel, getting instant visual feedback on what you’re changing.”
The current tour has put the dLive system through some taxing conditions, but Hyten was impressed by how their consoles held up. “We just opened a big show in Phoenix, where it hit about 109 degrees Fahrenheit,” he recalled. “Some other groups had their equipment shutting down and failing, but the dLives were rock solid.”
