OMAHA, NE – When the band Vertical Horizon went out on tour this year, they tapped industry veteran Jay Phebus as their FOH engineer and tour manager. The group is best known for "Everything You Want" from the 1999 album of the same name. This year, founding members Matt Scannell and Keith Kane decided to hit the road to promote the group's new album, Burning the Days.
"I've been working with them for about three years now, but it's mostly been a lot of fly dates," notes Phebus. "But when they decided to do a real U.S. tour, I knew exactly what I wanted to take on the road with me." That list was topped by the Allen & Heath iLive T-Series digital mixing console. Phebus opted for a standard iLive T-112 control surface with iDR-32 MixRack. "It's got a great sound, a small footprint, and it's incredibly flexible. And the price point is amazing, which is a real factor in touring these days."
"Vertical Horizon is a relatively straightforward rock band, with two guitars, three vocals, bass and drums" notes Phebus. "There's also some triggered percussion and keyboard parts from a hard disc machine, to give an authentic feel to their hits." Both guitars are dual-output systems, with a piezo system complementing traditional pickups, which can be switched from electric to acoustic, or both simultaneously, so in effect there are four guitars available, two electrics and two acoustics, as needed.
Serving as both FOH engineer and tour manager, the iLive proved well-suited to Phebus' needs. "It's a fraction of the setup time. The other day, I was busy and, literally 15 minutes before sound check, hadn't even walked into the building. I walked in, put my iLive together, and was ready to rock. Nobody knew the difference."
Setup and tear-down are similarly efficient. "The entire design is brilliant. We just run one Cat5 to the house from the iDR on stage and we're ready. Another cool feature is the road case that it comes in. You just pop the cap off and mount the control surface on top of it. At the end of the night, I can have the console down and in its case, literally within three minutes. And the T-112 is so much lighter than other consoles, I could actually grab the case and walk out the door if I had to."
Of course, the real test on tour is the sound. Phebus isn't shy about his feelings in that area. "I first got into Allen & Heath consoles because they sound so great. It all starts with the preamps, and they just sound fantastic! And the DSP engine has everything I could ask for. I literally have no need for any outboard gear whatsoever. I mean, you can patch in your must-have piece of gear, like an old Orban or Avalon, no problem, bring it on! But for me, all the onboard effects are all I'll ever need."
For Vertical Horizon, Phebus did request one upgrade to the standard T-112. "I did add the MADI card to enable live recording on my Alesis HD24," he notes. "The sound coming off the iLive is so good, you could release it as a live album." It's a technique that Phebus has come to rely on, having used it to record live performances for other clients such as Joe Bonamassa and King's X.
Phebus sets up the console in DCA groups, with one for vocals, one for drums, one for bass, and another for guitars. "I put the keyboard parts with the vocals," Phebus explains. "I could just as easily put them with the guitars. But a lot of the keyboard parts go right on the melody line. That was my rationale for putting them with the vocal DCA."
Because the band doesn't have drastic changes in instrumentation during the show, Phebus doesn't uses scene changes live, preferring to make his changes by hand in real time. However, he still finds the scene-saving capability to be a lifesaver. "I triple-save my setup every day – once on the console and two copies that go onto USB drives," he relates. "So if something goes awry for the guest engineer, all I do is click a button and it's all back. It's saved my life a few times." He does the same procedure after soundcheck and then again at the end of the night, thus creating an archive of his settings for every city and venue.
Having experienced most every digital console on the market, Phebus is convinced that the Allen & Heath iLive is the smart choice, especially for those new to the world of digital mixing. "The thing about the iLive is, it's just so easy. The key is the dynamics section. It's the main feature of the entire console, and it's always there, right in your face. You see signal flow in four different places – on top of the channel, coming into the gate, coming into the compressor, and coming into the limiter. It's so easy to follow. The iLive system is the most simplified digital console on the planet to use. It just eliminates that analog-to-digital learning curve. I see it all the time with the local venue engineers I work with. It's like I say, ‘if you can't mix on an Allen & Heath iLive, you're not a qualified analog engineer!"
The other thing that has impressed Jay Phebus is the value he sees in the T Series. "When Allen & Heath released the T-Series, they created an updated version of the iLive, with some modifications and improvements along the way. And yet the price is incredibly low. You give up some of the flexibility of the original iLive, but you literally get everything else. So the only thing you're doing is committing to a configuration, and you're getting ALL the processing power, ALL the effects. The iLive does every single thing I want it to do, and I couldn't be happier. It is simply an exceptional product."
Vertical Horizon, along with FOH engineer Jay Phebus and an Allen & Heath iLive T-112, will go back on the road beginning in February 2010.
For more information, please visit www.ilive-digital.com/t.
