Allen's digital mixing systems & Heath on Rick Wakeman and 'Local Natives' tours

The legendary keyboardist uses the Qu-32 digital mixer for his concerts, while the American indie-rock band makes use of the digital mixing console dLive S Class to manage the operational monitoring needs of their tour.

Keyboardist and composer Rick Wakeman, best known for being one of the members of the legendary band 'Yes', is currently touring with singer Jon Anderson (also a founding member of that group) and guitarist Trevor Rabinas.

A musical tour called ARW, for which Wakeman has chosen a Qu-32 digital mixer from Allen & Heath (whose products it sells in Spain and Portugal Audio-Technica Iberia) to complete your scenario team, manufacturer whose products you have relied on on previous occasions, as in the dLive digital mixing systems that have been responsible for managing the FOH sound and monitors of several of their solo concerts.

Wakeman's team on stage includes eleven keyboards (some modern and some classic); four sound modules and a Qu-32 digital mixer from Allen & Heath, which provides a new level of control to Wakeman's performance. before, the artist had an analog mixer, with basic DSP functions, but now the scenes offered by Qu-32 mix and direct specific keyboards to the FOH console, along with selected DSP effects to help create Wakeman's very personal acting style in each song.

Engineer Erik Jordan controls Wakeman's equipment using a complex MIDI system, specially designed for this tour, which has as a central element a Sycologic M16 MIDI patch bay that acts as a master controller. As Wakeman's performance evolves, he himself uses a simple keyboard to select various Sycologic configurations, each of which sends specific MIDI commands to wakeman keyboards and the qu-32 mixer, in a complex 'dance' that reconfigures the entire system for the next song.

"For any sound source and for any song," explains Jordan.- we can adjust the input gain and address of the signal; the EQ; noise doors and compressors and three or four different effects. It is vital that the mixer responds very quickly and evenly, and Qu-32 does it very well".

For this engineer, the DSP of this Allen digital mixer & Heath is optimal, "what has not allowed to simplify Rick's team, eliminating many external effects. In all respects, the Qu is a phenomenal console. It is completely reliable and surprisingly powerful, which behaves like mixers that cost ten times more. I just had to connect it and I started working immediately.".

For Rick Wakeman, "Qu-32 has become a cornerstone of my team. It gives me full control over the mix and shapes the sound like any other of my instruments.. This console opens up new possibilities for my music".

'Local Natives’ with dLive

In his successful series of concerts in the United States and Europe, 'Local Natives', American indie-rock band based in Los Angeles, has relied on the dLive S Class digital mixing system, also from the manufacturer Allen & Heath, to manage operational monitoring needs.

As a promotion of their third studio album, called 'Sunlit Youth', monitor engineer Laurence Eaves provided the five band members with twelve separate monitoring mixes, in-ear and through wedges, of the 48 sources present on stage, using a dLive S5000 surface with a modular dLive DM64 MixRack mixing and processing rack.

To accommodate all of these changes, Eaves uses dLive scenes to re-adjust microphones as musicians change positions on stage and reconfigure mixes. It also employs dLive filter recovery to quickly modify scenes when the situation requires it.

On the other hand, maintains both frequently used microphones and drop sends on the upper layers of the dLive and places the reverb sends and the main outputs of the wedges and in-ear monitors in the lower layers.

Eaves uses the dLive 'plate' reverb for each band member and 'plate' and 'hall' reverbs for the box and toms. At the same time, uses the two-stage valve preamplifier - which emulates valve harmonics- on bass and drum microphones. As for the dynamic equalization and delay that the system incorporates, applies them to the battery, as well as in other sources. A Dante card installed on the S5000 surface allows multitrack digital recording and Eaves uses the Virtual Soundcheck option to configure each performance.

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