Following international success in the early 1980s, German heavy metal pioneers, Accept reformed in 2009 with a new lead singer and have since landed multiple Top 10 chart entries and perform across Europe and America. Currently on their worldwide Rise of Chaos tour, the band are using Allen & Heath’s dLive digital mixing system for FOH and monitor duties for the first time.

‘As we mostly travel by air to all our international shows, the complete monitor and FOH set-up needs to be extremely compact and light,’ explains main sound engineer Oliver Tschotow, whose full set-up includes a C1500 Surface with Waves card, CDM32 MixRack fitted with both AES and Madi cards, two DX168 Expanders, two IP8 Remote Controllers and a further two ME-1 Personal Mixers.

Additionally, as there’s no separate monitor desk for this tour, IEM mixes are routed through the C1500 surface and each band member has the ability to change their individual monitor mixes on stage, using the dLive OneMix app.

‘We are also working on a project with Accept for next year called Symphonic Terror,’ he continues. ‘hese shows will feature a symphony orchestra and we needed a system that can deliver a minimum of 24 faders, 120 channels and 50 buses, all in a compact format and with 96kHz signal processing, Madi and AES, virtual soundcheck and multitrack recording, again at 96kHz. Plus, we also need access to multiband EQs, dynamics and plug-ins, in order to be independent from any external outboard gear. On top of that, we wanted an individual iPad-based monitoring solution, worldwide support and everything on a tight budget – not an easy task. However, with our new dLive system we’ve found an unbeatable compact solution, with fantastic features and stunning audio quality.’

As Accept don’t use any outboard effects during their shows, the quality and flexibility of dLive’s internal effects and plug-ins play a crucial role in the concept. ‘The internal plug-ins sound amazing, so I don’t have the need for any external plug-in solution’, says Tschotow. ‘One of the most important tasks in metal music is the processing of the drums – these need to be punchy and aggressive as hell! This is where the Transient Controller and Opto compressor plug-ins shine. I’m using them both in a parallel compression scenario and separately on the single drum signals, such as the snare drum.

‘A big problem sometimes is the bleeding of the cymbal sounds into the microphone of the lead singer, Mark Tornillo,’ he adds. ‘The Dyn8’s four-band Dynamic EQ helps me lower the high frequencies to 12dB when Mark isn’t singing. I use another band as a DeEsser and the lower band is set to compensate for the proximity effect. With dLive, I have all the tools to work creatively with sounds, introduce colours and deliver a polished mix – it’s great.’

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