The opening of the Broadway musical Kinky Boots took place at the 1,200-capacity Teatro Astral in Buenos Aires, which is home to various productions, events, conferences, congresses, seminars and exhibitions. With the theatre not having its own in-house system, audio rental company BR Sound provided an Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing system for the production.
Kinky Boots will be staged multiple times each week over the next two years, and features a large cast of actors and musicians, requiring a large-format mixing desk. ‘We needed a flexible, compact and powerful mixer, with an affordable price,’ explains BR Sound lead engineer, Santiago Rivero. ‘We immediately thought of A&H mixers, because we are former GLD users and have always loved the sound.’
Supplied by Allen & Heath’s Argentine distributor ARS Technologies, the full set-up features a dLive C3500 surface – with the show using around 80 input channels and more than 100 scene changes paired with a CDM48 MixRack, which is fitted with a Dante card for multitrack recording and playback. Personal monitoring for each musician is via seven ME-1 systems connected to the MixRack and deployed in the orchestra pit alongside a DX168 expander, which provides additional analogue I/O.
‘dLive is just the best fit for the show,’ Rivero reports. ‘From the amazing graphic interface, to the large number of customisable options and knobs, dLive can be used in a number of ways and it allows operators with different workflows to get to grips with it incredibly easily. Also, as we need to use third-party software for the show, the optional networking cards mean that dLive can easily integrate and work with everything we could need.’
More: www.allen-heath.com
