An Allen & Heath dLive mixing system was at the hub of the audio production effort for “Art on Ice,” an ice-skating gala event that celebrated its 25th anniversary this month with a series of shows in Zurich, Lausanne, Basel and Davos.
Produced by Swiss AV company Habegger AG (with Session Pro helping to supply gear), the production utilized a dLive S7000 control surface paired with a DM64 MixRack fitted with a superMADI card for multi-track recording as well as a Waves V3 card for external plugins.
Operated by front of house engineer Sascha Kohl, dLive handled all sources, including the musicians, vocalists, presenter and playback. The nature of the venues presented some challenges. Kohl explains, “As the main part of the hall is a very large, highly reflective sheet of ice, I was never able to get into a really good listening position, which made getting the mix perfect a little tricky at times. As the PA was set up for the crowd, having the possibility to do the VSC on my laptop, via dLive Director, and walk around the venue was absolutely essential.”
Kohl also utilized dLive’s scene management, including the ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’ update functions, and the MCA control introduced in firmware V1.8, which allowed Kohl to run the entire show via one surface.
“The music, video playback, band, singers and presenter work seamlessly together and it’s great to have one system that can handle anything thrown at it,” Kohl concludes. “I’ve been using dLive since the very beginning and before that I was a long-time user of iLive, so I’m totally into A&H consoles. dLive’s workflow is just quick and easy to use, and I love the additional DEEP processing available, such as the OptTronik, 16VU and 16T.”
