Allen & Heath Flies the UK Flag at SXSW Festival

Allen & Heath's iLive digital mixing system was selected by promoters, Cato Music, to manage front-of-house and monitors on the British Music Embassy stage at this year's iconic SXSW festival in Austin Texas. Showcasing the UK's brightest new bands and artists, the British Music Embassy was exclusively based at downtown Austin's Latitude 30 club, where an iDR-48 MixRack and iLive-T112 Control Surface was installed at front-of-house, digitally split using a Dante networking card to a duplicate iDR-48/T112 for monitors.

There were performances from nearly 60 bands over the course of the week-long festival, including emerging talent Django Django, fiN, Maverick Sabre, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Jonquil, Ben Howard, Slow Club, Twin Atlantic, D/R/U/G/S, Skindred, and Clock Opera.

"I ran the desk in a very analogue way, all inputs on the left banks, and master section on the right and some visiting engineers wanted things moved around but we always managed to get the bands ready in the 15 minute changeovers. Some band engineers had never used the desk before but were so stunned by the ease of use, sound quality, and format of the system they promptly added iLive to their riders," explains front-of-house house engineer, Fabrizio Piazzini. "The festival patch included 37 channels but running iLive Editor meant I could drop all the channels for each performance on a single layer with just a few clicks. On the monitor side, we were running five mixes, with the odd band turning up with full IEM rigs. To ring out the wedges, we used the iLive MixPad app so we could actually EQ the system in the spot the artist would stand."

The iLive system was supplied by Allen & Heath's US distributor, American Music & Sound, which also supplied Turbosound loudspeakers and beyerdynamic mics.

"I think iLive was a critical piece of the set up and it delivered every night," commented Glen Rowe from Cato Music. "The British Music Embassy was a huge success this year and some sessions were so busy we set up more delays and opened the windows on the venue for people to hear outside!"