AUSTIN, TX — Audio pros supporting the 40 U.K. bands performing over a five-day span as part of the seventh annual British Music Embassy lineup at the 27th annual SXSW festival faced a considerable challenge during the 2014 event. Along with scant time for sound checks and enormous and ever-changing input lists as each act performed their 45-minute set, BBC Radio was streaming live to the U.K. for the first time. Allen & Heath gear helped make the whole thing happen.
More details from Allen & Heath (www.allen-heath.com) and American Music and Sound (www.AmericanMusicAndSound.com):
Streaming Live From SXSW At The British Music Embassy and the Dell Computer Fader Fort Courtesy Of Allen & Heath
At this years South By Southwest Music Festival, with its one hundred plus Music venues, a distinct and familiar challenge could be heard repeatedly by the Army of Front-Of-House engineers employed to handle the high stress, fast paced music scene…Sound Check? Line Check? What’s that? Case in point, at the British Music Embassy, sponsored by the UK Trade and Investment Corporation, over forty UK bands played sets over a five day run with each band getting a 45 minute slot of time. Add to this was the BBC Radio streaming live to the UK for the first time. In the middle of all of this, and simultaneously at the Dell Computer “Fader Fort,” was Allen & Heath’s US team headed by Michael Palmer. “We had these two official venues using Allen & Heath consoles plus a dozen more unofficial South By Southwest venues using a variety of Allen & Heath mixers.” states Palmer. For the British Embassy series there was the distinct challenge aforementioned, plus the need to send the audio signal to the BBC and UK talk shows hosting remote interviews live. “We had an Allen & Heath GLD 112 with the latest 1.4 firmware freshly installed at the front-of-house position. Plus we used an AR 2412 and two AR84’s to give us a total of 44 microphone inputs and 24 microphone outputs.” Palmer adds.
At the monitor position an Allen & Heath GLD-80 with an AR 2412 and AR 84 was being used with five Tannoy VX 12HP coaxial monitors (bi-amped with five Lab.gruppen IPD 2400 amps) and a Tannoy VSX 10BP sub providing drum fill. The mains rig included two Tannoy VQ 60s and three VS 218DR subs powered by two Lab.gruppen four-channel PLM 20000Q amplifiers with Lake control used for FOH.
Now in its seventh year at the festival, the British Embassy hosted the BBC’s first ever showcase radio show live from Austin, Texas. To handle the challenge the Allen & Heath GLD 112 was running the WAVES sound grid with a Dante Card split, during the Thursday live web streaming Talk Show a Focusrite Rednet 6 was used to connect the Dante stream to a MADI signal.
Over at the Dell Computer Fader Fort was Brett Orrison, veteran Front of House Engineer for Austin’s own The Black Angels. All of the live inputs were being run from a remote trailer via live streaming with an Allen & Heath iLive T112 and an IDR 64 running a WAVES sound grid. By remote we mean literally 400 feet from the stage. We’ll let Brett fill you in on the rest as our guest Front of House reporter:
“The Truest challenge of mixing live stream during SXSW, in this case being for Fader.com and Sirius Satellite XMU, is the lack of sound checks and the enormous and ever changing input lists. The scenario is this, 10 bands of completely different genres per day with 20 minute set changes, for 5 days straight. No full band line checks and 90% of the time I have no idea what the band sounds like until the show starts in 
which case my mix is already live streaming. This means that if I reach for something be it EQ, Dynamics, Pan, Gain etc. It better be easy to get too and accomplish what I’m trying to do very fast and in a way that sounds pleasing to the thousands of people in their cars and on their computers. The Allen and Heath iLive worked extremely well for this. I enjoyed the soft knee button on the compressors. I was able to dial in vocals fast with broadcast quality. Not just any vocalists either. There was Snoop Dog, Erycah Badu, P Diddy, Les Claypool, Wiz Kalifa, Big Freedia, De la Soul, Damon Albarn of Blur, Bun B, SZA, Rick Ross, etc. It had to be dialed in within a few words. I also liked the side chain option in the onboard compressor. I used it as a d-esser at times. The EMT Reverbs and the 2tap delay were really useful in helping me create a live concert environment and I was pleasantly surprised with the depth of the Reverbs. Overall the Allen & Heath iLive was a great experience.”
And, as Michael Palmer points out; “The iLive systems unique design allowed us to do this very remote set up with only one CAT 5 cable instead of multiple heavy cables, for which there was no room. The system ran flawlessly for five days in rain, heat and snow.”
Sound Check? Line Check?
In the spirit of the UK’s punk band, ‘The Slaves,’ who burned up the Embassy Stage…”We don’t need no sound check Debbie!”
