New York, NY (December 5, 2025)—Rap rockers From Ashes to New have been on the road this fall, laying the groundwork for the band’s upcoming fifth album, and along for the ride with them once again is Taylor “Squid” Veraldi, who has manned their FOH position since 2018.
While he may be behind the desk with them again, the desk itself has changed. A while back, the band began maxing out its digital console, so Squid offered some ideas. “I had mixed monitors for the band Nothing More that same year on an Allen & Heath dLive S5000 and I immediately fell in love with it,” he recalled. “I loved the flexibility, it sounded amazing, and the user interface made things so easy.”
All in, the band purchased a dual-screen S5000 surface for front of house, a compact 12-fader C1500 surface for monitor mixing and playback, and a DM64 MixRack as the main processing engine for the system. “We didn’t have a true monitor engineer yet,” said Squid, “so the C1500 was also sometimes used for fly dates if we needed a more compact rig at front of house.”
Discover more great stories—get a free Mix SmartBrief subscription!
Mixing the group offers some unique challenges for Squid, mainly due to the band’s wide dynamics. “I deal with delay throws, filter vocals, screaming, snare bombs, and complex guitar panning,” he explained. “I used to do a lot of that manually on the fly—but now I use dLive’s actions and SoftKeys to automate a lot of the work.”
He also likes that all the system’s processing happens in the MixRack, meaning that trouble at front of house doesn’t stop the show. “I once lost power at FOH and I was worried that the show was dead,” he recalled. “Thankfully, all the audio kept passing and I had time to get my surface powered back up and start making adjustments again.”
• Washburn and Woods Hit the Road with Compact Rig
For the next upgrade, the band is looking at purchasing an additional DM0 mix engine with RackUltra FX built-in, doubling processing power and providing some new effects to work with, like saturators, harmonizers, amp simulation and more. “I got to try the RackUltra FX with Ice Nine Kills and it was amazing,” said Squid. “The additional MixRack also gives us more busses for more routing flexibility and front fills.”
