Counting Coldplay, The Foo Fighters, Ray Lamontagne and Sheryl Crow among its many shows, London’s Scala is a mecca for the capital’s clubbing community, regularly opening its doors for drum ’n’ bass, reggae, rock and garage nights. As part of a recent significant upgrade to the former Kings Cross cinema’s in-house audio system, the venue has invested in an Allen & Heath dLive S Class digital mixing system at FOH.

Featuring a dLive S5000 surface partnered with a DM48 MixRack, the set-up also incorporates a Waves V3 audio networking card to allow laptop-based multitrack recording (up to 128 tracks) of live events via a single Cat cable. The inclusion of an iP8 remote controller also increases flexibility with its ability to control the dLive MixRack in conjunction with Allen & Heath’s Director software for an ultra-compact set-up.

Scala is also now home to a GLD-80 digital mixer for monitors – chosen in part to its compact footprint, ease-of-use and flexible functionality – and a Xone:PX5 DJ mixer for both visiting and in-house DJs.

‘Although it’s a really powerful set-up, dLive is a very easy system to use – which is important at a venue like Scala where we have a lot of visiting engineers,’ says Scala FOH engineer David Preston. ‘I have a show file that I use as a basic template to get them started and they’re generally up and running in ten minutes. I can go and patch in the stage, come back and they’ll have 95 per cent of the desk figured out on their own. It’s highly customisable, sounds great and the system has worked incredibly well for every gig, club night and style of music we’ve thrown at it.’

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