In light of the pandemic/lockdown, a group of live event professionals in the UK have come together to create a new audio and video production service, AfterLive Music, inspired to help artists, record labels and promoters present online performances that are recorded, mixed and mastered with help from a variety of Audient gear.
“It was our love of live music that brought us together, and drives us and this project forward,” explains Adam Bonner, who along with Jamie Tinsley looks after ‘all things audio’ for the new venture. “We didn’t feel that early lockdown live performances were representing the artist in a good way at all. Poor audio quality was my biggest issue.” Not surprising when he has spent his last five years as FOH/PM for prog rock act, Haken and taking on high-end corporate work. Tinsley, who has toured and mixed monitors for Rag’N’Bone Man, Sam Smith and Will Young was also keen to get back to ‘live’ work, as well as spend more time honing his studio recording techniques.
Bonner set up at Subfrantic Production Services in the London Borough of Bromley, where AfterLive Music hires a purpose-built studio comprising a live room, green room and control/mix room. The audio is captured in the live room and recorded via Dante into two machines running Logic (main and backup), providing up to 64 channels of multitrack recording.
All of the post-production (audio and video) is produced in-house by AfterLive Music, which is where an Audient iD44 audio interface and an ASP800 8-channel mic preamp come into play. “During the recording process the Audient gear is used if we need to overdub/comp any vocals or guitars afterwards,” Bonner explains. “Then in post-production the iD44 acts as an output device to feed the monitors for the mix and master. The difference that the clarity and transparency of the output stage made to our monitors was mind-blowing.”
The operation also picked up a couple of EVO 4 audio interfaces, the smallest of the new range launched by Audient this year. “We got these predominantly as output devices for our video editing suites,” says Bonner. “But also so Tom, our Director of Photography, can smash out some riffs into neural DSP on his Mac whilst taking a break from editing. The EVO 4s are seriously great little units. When live events start up again, I’ll be using mine as I/O for my Smaart rig for tuning and time aligning PA systems also.”
The pandemic has decimated the live events industry this year, forcing Bonner and his colleagues to find a way to use the skills that they’ve developed over the years in new ways. “The creation of AfterLive Music has kept us grounded and focussed. Having a project to throw yourself at has generated some much needed income in an environment where traditional revenue streams are non-existent, kept our spirits high and had a positive impact on our mental health.”
