English pop-rockers The Feeling recently celebrated the 12th anniversary of their debut album with their ‘Twelve Stops and Home’ tour – supported by an Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system.
Supplied by SSE Audio, the full set-up includes an S7000 surface at front of house, accompanied by a DM64 MixRack on stage. Both front of house and monitors are mixed from the S7000 with the dLive’s 128 input processing channels enabling duplicates of input signals to be made for discrete front of house – monitor processing. Additionally, the MixRack is fitted with a Dante card for multi-track recording.
“The 128 processing channels and 64 buses were perfect for duplicating channels for monitors and band members who needed further processing in their IEM’s. I never had to compromise on anything, giving the band what they needed on stage and for what I needed out front,” comments front of house engineer Jon Lewis. “The workflow of the desk is also incredible. It’s so quick. I can mix the show creatively with great ease and if a musician suddenly decides they need a monitoring change, I can do this within seconds. This was one of the reasons I went for the larger S7000 surface. It’s all there right in front of you.”
The S7000’s fully assignable layout with 36 faders and 6 layers ensure that any channel can be accessed quickly by the engineer. The OneMix iOS app was also used by the band for fine tuning of individual monitor mixes.
Additionally, with a high sensitivity condenser microphone utilized on the lead vocals, the Dyn8 multiband dynamic processor is deployed for optimal control and several compressors from the DEEP Processing suite were used throughout.
Lewis explains, “The onboard processing is just excellent. Whether it be the default compressors or the “Opto” comp on my drum group… they sound so good! The lead singer of The Feeling likes using the Neumann KMS 105 and with this being a condenser mic, it can get lively at times – the compressor helped tame this immensely and allowed me to keep the vocal at the front of the mix at all times. It’s really fantastic.”
Lewis finally adds, “The first thing I noticed when I started using dLive was how great it sounded. The pre’s are excellent and crystal clear. The EQ is both accurate and creative and the compression modelling is fantastic, again just really creative. This is why the dLive is my go to console of choice.”
