BERMUDA — Two Allen & Heath iLive-144 digital consoles provided FOH and monitor mixing duties for the 13th Annual Bermuda Music Festival. Audio Incorporated from Roselle Park, N.J., ran sound for the event.
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 and laser display, etc. The iLive in monitor position ran different combinations of wedges, side-fills and stereo IEM sends for the various acts.
“The iLive is probably the most flexible digital console I’ve seen,” acknowledges 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, 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,” Sinclair says. “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.”
The ability to freely name, assign and color-code channels and masters anywhere across the console was considered particularly useful.
“System set-up on the control surface screens was very fast,” Sinclair remarks. “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,” Sinclair concludes, “and gather the important lead vocals and solos, for example, into the central sweet spot.”
The Bermuda Music Festival, held on the island, Oct. 3–6, offered something for just about everybody. Entertainment included The O’Jays, Chrisette Michele, Lionel Richie, Natasha Bedingfield, Smokey Robinson and Earth, Wind & Fire, together with comedic hosts Tommy Davidson, Kym Whitley and Steve Harvey, plus a special artistic musical set by Dan Dunn.
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For information, please visit www.allen-heath.com/US.
