Norwegian PA Company Selects iLive for Blues Festival

For the fourth year running, Norwegian PA company, Sceneservice, provided sound, light and staging for the Blues in Hell Festival, selecting Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing systems for the front-of-house and monitors. The festival derives its name from the location, which is the village of Hell in the Nord-Trondelag area of Norway. The main festival venue is the Magic Mirror, a spectacular tent from the Belgian company Magic Mirrors, which hosted headline performances from artists including Delbert McClinton, Johnny Winter, Popa Chubby, and Jeniva Magness.

Sceneservice selected an iDR10 MixRack with iLive-144 control surface for the front-of-house and an iDR-32 MixRack and an xDR-16 expander rack with iLive-T80 Surface for monitors. There was also an analog split to provide a broadcast feed.

"Our experiences with the iLive system have proven it to be very reliable, nicely compact for small venues, and always sounds amazing. It is also very easy to teach guest engineers about it, even during change over at a busy festival," says Stein Larsen, from Sceneservice. "We have been using the iLive iPad app for some while and trust it totally, and we are looking forward to exploring the Dante networking option for multi-track recording."

As well as the Magic Mirror tent, some performances were staged in the Værnes Church, Norway's oldest stone building, from year 1100.

"We used our iDR-32 and iLive-T112 for this beautiful, 400-capacity venue, which featured a performance by local singer, Siri Bones. I can only describe the sound with the overused expression 'crystal clear,' even Siri's lowest whisper was audible at the back of the church," concluded Larsen.