London, UK (May 26, 2023)—Canadian rocker Devin Townsend latest album, Lightwork, is heavy stuff, and crowds came out to hear it every night on his recent European tour, which saw him going everywhere from Oslo to London. Along for the ride was his able band and the audio team of Christophe Edrich at FOH and Sam Chadwick at stageside in monitorworld.
In the post-COVID touring landscape, keeping things lightweight and compact is a crucial aspect of bringing gear on the road, and with that in mind, the engineers opted for compact Allen & Heath dLive C1500 control surfaces and a shared CDM32 Mix Rack, all supplied by STS Touring Productions and Pulse PA.
Monitor man Chadwick noted, “The C1500/CDM package is incredible for touring. Although the venues we’re playing are similar capacities, the differences in stage size can be significant. The CDM is easy to fit in anywhere and I’ve never had a set-up this size that’s so functional and so ‘musical’, for the want of a better word.
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“We’ve got the gigaACE networking card in the CDM32 so that we can run both C1500 surfaces on the single MixRack and we’re breaking out into two DX168s on the drum riser, which are daisy-chained. It’s all very streamlined and it’s been totally flawless for the whole tour.”
The small-footprint desk was equally applicable out at FOH, said Edrich: “I have an IP8 Remote Controller working in conjunction with my C1500 – I love having those few extra faders for my FX returns and tracks that I need access to regularly. Even though it’s a small-format surface I find the C1500 very tactile and great to mix in this way with.”
Neither Edrich nor Chadwick rely on external effects, preferring to use the dLive’s built-in processing, with both singling out the Dyn8 EQ/multiband compressor. “I love the Dyn8,” said Edrich. “I have them on inputs, sub-groups – it’s really useful for Devin’s vocals because he uses a lot of head-voice, which adds a lot of resonance, so the Dyn8 keeps it really controlled and clear. I have a subgroup with Dev’s voice that I can use to compress everything between 350 Hz and 4 kHz – that band is compressed by Dev’s voice, so they’re ducked when he sings. Super-useful.”
