The first-ever BeachLife Ranch Festival in Los Angeles (Redondo Beach), which focused on country-americana music in presenting headline artists such as The Lumineers, Hall and Oates, Brandi Carlile and Wilco, saw the deployment of two Allen & Heath consoles at the Four Sixes Speakeasy stage, with a Qu Series mixer at front of house along with a 64-channel Avantis for multitrack recording and broadcast to Volume.com’s live music streaming platform.
The Avantis was paired with a GX4816 stagebox, which provided 48 remote mic preamps to receive audio via a split snake. The console also housed a 128-channel 96 kHz Waves module allowing for external processing and simpler multitrack recording. “The Avantis was awesome,” notes Justin Corser, audio engineer and program director for Volume.com. “We had some staff at the festival who were still new to digital consoles, and it was really easy to get them started on Avantis. It’s like the console does the mixing for you.”
For streaming services like Volume.com, compression is of high interest since users listen on a variety of devices. “The Avantis’ bus compressor was really clean,” states Chris Austin, audio engineer and business development manager for Volume.com. “The preamp models that add harmonics were also really cool for adding color and saturation to certain channels.”
Austin also points to the Avantis console’s Virtual Soundcheck function: “At festivals, you generally only get a few minutes to set up your mix. Using Virtual Soundcheck, it’s a single keypress to toggle between a live source and DAW playback from a previously recorded session. That gave us the time we needed to really fine tune things and get the compression right.”
Austin and Corser indicate that they plan on using Avantis for more Volume.com streaming events in the future. “It’s such a versatile console,” Corser says. “I can easily see myself using it at any festival main stage without issue. It’s really easy for beginners, but also has enough depth for the most seasoned touring engineer to dive in and make use of all the complex functionality.”
“Volume continues to raise the bar with amazing live and streamed events,” adds Jeff Hawley, marketing director, Allen & Heath USA. “It’s been great to watch Chris and the team as they have grown and expanded with Allen & Heath consoles in the mix for various productions. I look forward to seeing where they go next!”
