Two Allen & Heath iLive-144 digital consoles provided front-of-house and monitor mixing duties for the 13th Annual Bermuda Music Festival. Audio Incorporated from Roselle Park, N.J., ran sound for the event.
“The iLive is probably the most flexible digital console I’ve seen,” says Mike Sinclair, co-owner of Audio Incorporated and one of the engineering crew handling FOH mixing duties. “It feels like it was designed by people who mix sound rather than engineers who don’t use these systems on a regular basis—and that understanding really shows in the user interface and front panel features.
“We have provided the iLive for various events,” Sinclair continues, “but the Bermuda Music Festival was my first time handling live mixing with the console; it didn’t take long for me to become very familiar with the system. The template layout was very useful since we could return to a basic setup at the touch of a button, something that is impossible with conventional analog designs. I was very happy with what I heard during the festival. I love the way the iLive digital console sounded with the VerTec arrays; it’s a Ferrari of a sound system!”
The two iLive-144 consoles provided mixing duties for the majority of the festival’s support acts, including Natasha Beddingfield and comic Steve Harvey, in addition to the announcements, MC, audio-for-video, laser display, etc. The iLive in monitor position ran different combinations of wedges, side-fills and stereo IEM sends for the various acts.
“System setup on the control surface screens was very fast,” Sinclair adds. “To help visiting engineers learn the systems, we developed a number of basic templates that contained, on layers 3 and 4, the real input sources and, on layers 1 and 2, the remapped assignments for individual acts. Each band was provided with a customized layout that, in most cases, fit across a single layer of faders, having moved unused channels and masters to a lower layer. Color was used to highlight important channels and identify scenes that had been saved for different bands. We could lay out the console the way the engineer wanted to use it, and gather the important lead vocals and solos, for example, into the central sweet spot.”
For more information about iLive, visi www.ilive-digital.com. For more information on Audio Incorporated, visit www.audioincorporated.com. For additional SR news, visit The Briefing Room.
