With a warehouse full of touring gear grounded by Covid 19, Latvian rental company 3S SIA quickly transformed its Riga headquarters into a livestream performance space utilizing Allen & Heath dLive and Avantis mix systems.
Created in partnership with local broadcaster, TVNET, the resulting 3S Lockdown Sessions have reached tens of thousands of isolated music fans each week since they debuted in March, with livestreamed performances by artists including Latvian Blues Band, Aminata, Samanta Tina, Lauris Valters, Ozols, Indygo and Riga Reggae.
The 3S team is employing a dLive S7000 surface paired up with a DM64 MixRack to mix the broadcast, with a gigaACE split enabling connection to the Avantis console handling monitors. The Avantis was teamed with a KLANG 3D spatialization engine, with OSC MIDI commands allowing most parameters to be controlled from the desk.
“Allen & Heath was the natural choice for these sessions,” says 3S SIA owner and senior FOH engineer Einars Cintins. “Reliability is really important for me, and with A&H I know everything is going to work perfectly. One of the things I appreciate about dLive is that the Cat5 between stage and FOH only carries control data, so even if something happens to my cables, I can pull out my laptop or iPad and the show will go on.”
A DX32 expander loaded with Prime Input premium 8-channel preamp modules was deployed to help optimize audio quality for vocals and acoustic instruments. “We only received the Prime modules in March, so the Lockdown Sessions was our first chance to try them on a live show,” explains Einars. “You can clearly hear the difference on the studio monitors and I can’t wait to hear them on the full size arena PA system.”
DX168 and DX012 expanders help to distribute I/O between the warehouse and a pair of offices which had been converted into the mix position and video control room. The dLive system was fitted with a Dante 128×128 card to capture the multi-track recording along with a Waves card for connection to a DiGiGrid DGS server for external plugins.
The 3S Lockdown Sessions are set to continue until the end of lockdown.
