With a warehouse full of touring gear grounded by COVID-19, Latvian rental company, 3S SIA quickly transformed its Riga headquarters into a fully equipped livestream performance space, including Allen & Heath dLive and Avantis systems.
Created in partnership with local broadcaster, TVNET, the resulting 3S Lockdown Sessions have reached tens of thousands of isolating music fans each week since they debuted in March, with livestreamed performances by popular artists including Latvian Blues Band, Aminata, Samanta Tina, Lauris Valters, Ozols, Indygo and Riga Reggae.
When devising a mixing system for the sessions, the 3S team did not have to look any further than its own extensive Allen & Heath inventory, which includes four dLive systems. A dLive S7000 Surface was paired up with a DM64 MixRack to mix the broadcast, with a gigaACE split enabling connection to the Avantis console handling monitors. The Avantis was teamed with a KLANG 3D spatialization engine, with OSC MIDI commands allowing most parameters to be controlled from the desk.
“Allen & Heath was the natural choice for these sessions,” affirms 3S SIA owner and senior FOH Engineer, Einars Cintins. “Reliability is really important for me, and with A&H I know everything is going to work perfectly. One of the things I appreciate about dLive is that the Cat5 between stage and FOH only carries control data, so even if something happens to my cables, I can pull out my laptop or iPad and the show will go on.”
A DX32 expander loaded with PRIME Input premium 8-channel preamp modules was deployed to ensure optimal audio quality for vocals and acoustic instruments. “We only received the Prime modules in March, so the Lockdown Sessions was our first chance to try them on a live show,” explained Cintins. “You can clearly hear the difference on the studio monitors and I can’t wait to hear them on the full size arena PA system.”
DX168 and DX012 expanders helped to distribute I/O between the warehouse and a pair of offices which had been converted into the mix position and video control room. The dLive system was fitted with a Dante 128×128 card to capture the multi-track recording, along with a Waves card for connection to a DiGiGrid DGS server for external plugins.
The 3S Lockdown Sessions are set to continue brightening the days of Latvian fans until the end of lockdown.