The annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas has been celebrating the convergence of tech, film, music, education, and culture since 1987. For the past several years, Allen & Heath has had a significant presence at SXSW, with the company’s mixing consoles being featured at multiple performance stages.
This year will be no different, as Allen & Heath consoles will be in use throughout the festival – including the British Music Embassy stage, a venue for breakout UK music stars, where two flagship dLive S5000 surfaces will handle front of house and monitor mixing. Each surface will be paired with its own DM64 MixRack, featuring 128 channels of input processing and 64 configurable buses. Inputs from the stage will be fed into a DX32 modular stagebox, equipped with next-generation low-noise PRIME input modules. Allen & Heath’s proprietary gigaACE network audio protocol will handle the digital split between the two consoles, as well as shared preamp control. Aside from showcasing up and coming bands, the BME stage will also host innovative multimedia events featuring experimental audiovisual performances.
Across the street, the Sellers Underground stage will be powered by a 64-channel Allen & Heath Avantis console, along with a GX4816 remote stagebox. Avantis consoles handle festival mixing with ease, offering a dual full HD touchscreen workflow and 42 configurable buses which can adapt to the needs of any engineer.
“SXSW is always a highlight of our year and a chance to really connect with up-and-coming artists, touring engineers and music fans from every genre imaginable,” notes Allen & Heath USA Marketing Director Jeff Hawley. “It looks like we’ll be stepping up our presence again for 2023 with advance reports of increased dLive, Avantis, SQ, Qu and ZED deployments across Austin. Based on the positive response we had in past years around daily video reports from the show, we’ll also be continuing the trend this year and adding even more live-streamed backstage and behind-the-scenes content. Make sure to check out the SXSW media area for up-to-the-minute happenings from stages and unique venues across the event.”