British singer songwriter King Charles recently completed a UK tour, carrying an iLive system to manage both FOH and monitors. The system comprised an iDR-32 and iDR0 MixRacks, with an iLive-80 surface for FOH, and a laptop and iPad for monitor control.

‘On a concentrated tour like this – with 28 gigs in a row – being self-contained is really important,’ says FOH engineer, Jonathan Lewis. ‘The fact that iLive is so compact but so powerful is really beneficial.

‘The band is a pretty standard set-up of drums, bass, keys, two guitars, lead vocals and three backing vocals,’ he continues. ‘We could have managed just with the iDR-32 but adding the iDR0 means we don’t have to share PFL or scenes, and it gives us another 64 channels to cater for all the in-ear splits.’

All members apart from the bass band require several duplicate mixes – the drummer requires four mixes in total, Charles the lead singer has in-ears and a backup sub, and two of the musicians (keys and guitarist) swap instruments during the set and require duplicate mixes to enable the exchange.

‘The venues range from 200 to 2,000 capacity, so space is often a tight squeeze but as I’m using a laptop or iPad instead of a surface I can tuck myself away whilst being free to move close and keep eye contact with the band,’ says monitor engineer, Ross Rothero-Bourge. ‘iLive is so simple to use and set up. We can put the surface out front but keep the mixer on stage with me and just run Cat5 between them.’

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