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Motionless In White FOH engineer Logan Beaver with one of his dLive CTi1500 surfaces at Red Rocks.

Allen & Heath dLive On The Road With Motionless In White

Front of house engineer Logan Beaver deploying two dLive C1500 surfaces joined by DM48 and DM0 MixRacks for heavy metal band's arena tour.

Front of house engineer and tour manager Logan Beaver for heavy metal band Motionless In White, currently out on an arena tour, is employing two Allen & Heath dLive CTi1500 surfaces for a front of house and monitor split.

Beaver notes that he was hesitant to switch to a compact console for his major touring gigs: “A friend of mine was making these great sounding mixes on a dLive C1500. But I still never thought I could mix my band on just 12 faders.” Giving it a try, his mind was changed. “I just instantly fell in love with it. I’ve never looked back since.”

One surface is paired with a DM48 MixRack with 48 mic preamps and 24 line outputs processed via an XCVI 160 x 64 FPGA core, while the other connects to a DM0 compact MixRack for cases where no analog I/O is necessary. In this case, all audio is fed from the DM48 via a 128 x 128 channel gigaACE card with low transport latency. “It’s just so easy how it all works together,” Beaver states. “We use the new Gain Sharing feature over gigaACE so that both front of house and monitor positions can control the preamp gain.”

dLive’s simplicity also comes in handy during soundchecks and rehearsals when a monitor engineer isn’t always available. “I can just face the console towards the band, and they can easily make adjustments to their monitor mixes themselves,” explains Beaver. “They really love being able to walk up to the console and make changes on their own.”

He adds that he didn’t feel the need to add any outboard FX. “I only use the built-in dLive DEEP processing and I really love the new Bus Compressor. I put that on just about every bus in my mix. I also love the 16T compressor model for simple one-knob adjustments on toms and overheads.” For vocals, Beaver’s go-to is the OptTronik DEEP compressor, which is inspired by a popular tube-driven, electro-optical leveling amplifier.

The form factor of the CTi1500 is important for touring acts like Motionless In White, as it simplifies travel and load in/load out. “It’s 100 percent the easiest front of house console you can tour with,” Beaver concludes. “They’re under 70 pounds, so they can fly anywhere. We’ve been flying between continents and the consoles have held up perfectly. It only takes about 90 seconds after the show ends and we’re packed up and ready to move. I couldn’t imagine it being easier.”

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