08 September 2009

DAN BLACK TOURS WITH INNOVATIVE ALLEN & HEATH AUDIO SYSTEM

British leftfield singer songwriter, Dan Black, is currently touring Europe and the festival circuit with a ground-breaking audio set up from Allen & Heath’s iLive digital range.

Black’s FOH engineer, Steve Pattison, has selected a compact touring system comprising an iDR-32 MixRack and a laptop loaded with iLive Editor software, which he uses as a virtual control surface. The system not only mixes FOH audio but also wedge and IEM monitor requirements.

“I’m running the iDR rack and that's it... no desk, no surface, just the stagebox, which is mounted into our onstage loopstation,” explains Pattison.

Pattison runs looms out of the loopstation to the band’s mics and DI's and a loom into the house system so that all the mics and DI's run straight into the stagebox and from there are output to a master L&R mix and 3 wedge mixes, which are fed into the house multicore. For monitors, 2 lines are sent to the drummer’s mixer for his headphone mix, and Ferdi, the band technician, listens to his stereo in-ears mix by plugging into the iDR’s PFL output.

The Dan Black tour has visited a wide range of venues from fashion shows and record company parties to regular academy gigs and European festivals.

“With such varying levels of kit available at each gig, the A&H system gives us great consistency because I only ever need 5 channels from the house system - 2 for FOH and 3 for monitors - and I can run up to 32 inputs.”

Dan Black engineer, Steve Pattison, mixing on his laptop at FOH, , at the Queen’s Head Stage, Glastonbury 2009

To operate the iDR-32, Pattison connects his laptop using a regular wireless router, to run the iLive Editor software and recall show settings.

“The lack of physical surface means I can choose which surface size I want to use in the software, so I'm not limited to a certain number of channels or faders. For the Dan Black tour I’ve been using the iLive-T80 split it into 3 desks - the top layer for FOH, second layer for wedge mixes and third layer for in-ear monitors - so each discipline has its own channels, EQ, gates, compressors etc.” he says. “I can mix from wherever I like too! I can EQ wedges from the stage, or mix from the audience to get more of a feel for what the audience are hearing and not what's getting to FOH. I've also been surprised by the wireless range; it didn't drop out at the John Peel stage at Glastonbury and I was a good 50m away.”




Pattison's laptop, running iLive Editor control software, which he uses to mix Dan Black's shows

Pattison pioneered his mixing style when he toured with Alphabeat last year using iLive. Finding some venues logistically challenging, he began to leave his FOH system in the trailer and use the channels and a control layer from the iLive monitor system, mixing remotely from a laptop.

“It's definitely the smallest FOH footprint! It blows people’s minds when they see me rock up to front of house with a laptop and then just bring 2 faders up on their desk. Like any other engineer, I love knobs and faders but once you’re comfortable with the Editor layout mixing becomes second nature. It’s easy to drag and drop any fader to any layer mid gig, so you can decide exactly what you want on screen, just as you can on the actual surface,” he claims.

“A colleague recently covered for me at Dan's Koko show in London and the band asked if he'd use the iDR-32 because they know they only have to plug in and its all there – FOH, monitors, the lot - they love it! A couple of calls later and he ran the show from his laptop and had a great gig,” Pattison concludes.


Photo credits: Steve Pattison and Neil Holloway

The iDR-32 MixRack in the onstage loopstation