Grammy Award-winning artist, Imogen Heap, has taken to the road for the first time in eight years on her 40 week-long MYCELIA world tour. Heap was accompanied by Allen & Heath who provided their dLive system and a d&b audiotechnik Soundscape, to provide an immersive 3D audio experience for her fans.
Known for her innovative work in both music and technology, Heap’s tour comprised not only of live shows but also tech-based talks and workshops. In addition to this, exhibitions were held to promote the launch of the “Creative Passport” – Mycelia’s digital identity standard for music makers, built to deliver a flourishing artist-led music ecosystem.
The full live set-up included an Allen & Heath dLive DM0 MixRack along with two Allen & Heath DX168 expanders, purchased specifically for this tour, which were used in a multi-surface configuration to control both FOH and MON from a single MixRack. The configuration employed on the tour saw the Allen & Heath DM0’s 128 input processing channels split to provide 64 input channels with discrete processing for both monitors and FOH.
FOH Engineer, Joep Hendrikx commented: “The DM0 gives us the option to bring a console with the proper analogue and digital I/O that we can easily travel with on a plane, without compromising on feature set or sound quality.”
To interface with the performers’ laptop-based setups, the Allen & Heath DM0 was fitted with a superMADI card which sent audio to and from several RME MADIface Pro interfaces, enabling low-latency integration of software instruments and external processing, all at 96kHz. The DM0 was further equipped with a Dante card which was used for sending 64 post-fader direct outputs to the d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system.
“This tour is truly incredible and the technology used during these shows really speaks for the whole Mycelia project,” commented Leon Phillips, of Live Sound & Touring at Allen & Heath. “The brief was for a fly-able, expandable system that could hold its own on large-scale productions. I recommended a DM0 as the central brain and two DX168’s to handle the analogue IO, while the instruments’ audio and Imogen’s computer send and returns are kept in the digital domain using fibre-optic MADI links to a superMADI card. The system can be easily set-up, controlled by a laptop or tablet running Director software and it can fit into a Scott Dixon or Peli lightweight case, so it’s also easily transportable too. dLive’s versatility makes it perfect for the job.”
FOH Engineer, System Tech and Show Designer, Petra Randewijk added: “’When looking for the best setup for the tour, the advice to check out dLive came from almost every direction. The contact with Allen & Heath has been above and beyond anything I could have hoped for.”