Looking to replace audio consoles at the historic Cain’s Ballroom music venue in Tulsa, Oklahoma, sound engineer Jeremy Grodhaus sought a platform that would serve both prevailing and future needs. With a variety of corporate and non-music, as well as live music to consider, the new console had to be flexible. ‘We get a lot of guest engineers of various different experience levels, so the console has to be easy to walk up to and start mixing.’
Grodhaus compared Allen & Heath’s platform to those of other manufacturers but found nothing to match dLive’s value and workflow. ‘I hadn’t heard a bad thing about dLive, and I appreciated that the company was continuously updating firmware with new features,’ he says.
With the venue’s existing FOH and monitor consoles having grown long in the tooth, Cain’s set-up now comprises a dLive DM32 MixRack for front of house, connected to a 28-fader, dual touchscreen S5000 control surface. The DM32 houses a gigaAce card, which allows a simplified digital split over to a DM0 MixRack powering the monitor console – a 20-fader S3000. In addition, two DX168 expanders provide ready accessibility I/O on stage. He also added a 128-channel Waves card in the FOH system, in case any guest engineers wanted to use Waves plug-ins. A Dante card was included too, which supports simple multitrack recording and live streaming.
‘My thinking behind the set-up was flexibility and redundancy’ Grodhaus explains. ‘The DM32 has a redundant power supply, and the two DX168s plus DM0 can easily work as a backup front-of-house system in case there’s ever an issue.’
Grodhaus has been using the dLive since the venue’s upgrade, and his appreciation for the platform has grown significantly. ‘The native processing is strong enough that I don’t feel like I miss my external plug-ins,’ he reports. ‘The only thing I was lacking was a source expander, but that was thankfully added in a recent dLive firmware update and it has been very useful.’
Since Cain’s hosts many guest engineers, Grodhaus also has the opportunity to hear their opinions on the new house consoles. ‘Everybody seems to be very favourable towards it,’ Grodhaus says. ‘Even the guest engineers who bring in their own consoles are curious about it; some mention purchasing one in the future.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
