Australian punk pop band 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS) recently completed a tour of the UK, U.S. and Australia, and are about to embark on European dates supporting One Direction, traveling with a compact Allen & Heath iLive system to manage monitors.
Comprising an iDR-48 MixRack and rackmount iLive-R72 control surface, the system was specified by monitor engineer Ben Booker, a long-time iLive user. “It’s a very active show, and the R72 gives me all the channels at my finger tips really quickly,” he says.
Booker is providing mixes for eight sets of in-ears—four for the band, two for the crew, one for himself and a matrix spare, as well as a drum sub mix. “Crowd noise is a big problem in this gig,” he notes. “Imagine 3,000 14-17 year old girls screaming at full volume. To combat this I have four dynamic EQs in use on the four vocals to add a wide 2.5K boost to the vocals when they sing on the mics. It works really well.”
Booker is using the iLive MixPad iPad app during sound check to walk around the stage and adjust mixes in place. He is also multi-tracking the show every night using a Dante networking card in the MixRack’s B slot.
“This is great for virtual sound check and for future use if the band require live show recordings—it’s a very neat and quick recording solution,” he concludes.