Jamie Lawson’s 2018 headline and support tours FOH Engineer Rob Simpson (NUB Sound), opted for Allen & Heath dLive digital mixing systems, which he described as having: “unique clarity and headroom – and the best ergonomics in the business.”
The arena shows saw Simpson behind an Allen & Heath dLive S3000 surface (with Waves v3 audio networking card) at FOH, in conjunction with an Allen & Heath DM48 MixRack. The same MixRack model is used by engineer Mark Ellis for monitoring, with an Allen & Heath dLive S5000 surface fitted with M-DANTE card for virtual soundchecks and recording.
The FOH and monitor systems are linked via an Allen & Heath gigaACE networking card to allow transport of both audio and control over Ethernet via standard CAT cables.
Simpson explained: “I first toured with dLive in January 2016, and I loved it straight away. It’s an incredibly good-sounding system and the flexibility is unmatched, allowing you to lay out the surface exactly as you want to. We have both dLive surfaces networked together, allowing each to see both MixRacks on the network and we love the ability to pick and choose which surface is used at the FOH and mons positions with just a push of a button. That gives us total peace of mind in terms of redundancy.
“I’m running the S3000 at FOH for Jamie on the Ed Sheeran tour primarily because of its smaller footprint – it means I’m not in anyone’s way which really helps on a tour of this scale. But I still have enough faders and control with the S3000 surface and I’m running a Mac Mini and screen on the network, controlling my system using Allen & Heath’s Director software, which effectively gives me a second screen and a second console.
He concluded: “I often leave my FX parameters up on this screen and I can also use this to hop on to the monitor console if need be for whatever reason. It’s a very cool set-up.”