18 January 2010

BALANCING THE VERTICAL HORIZON WITH ILIVE

An iLive system, comprising an iDR-32 MixRack and iLive-T112 Control Surface, recently completed a countrywide tour with American rock band, Vertical Horizon.

The group is best known for their Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping single ‘Everything You Want', from the 1999 double-platinum 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 but it’s mostly been a lot of fly dates,” explains FOH engineer and tour manager, Jay Phebus. "When they decided to do a real U.S. tour, I knew exactly what I wanted to take on the road with me. iLive’s got a great sound, small footprint, it’s incredibly flexible, and the price point is amazing, which is a real factor in touring these days.”

Vertical Horizon‘s equipment requirements comprise two guitars, three vocals, bass and drums, with 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.

With time-intensive duties as both FOH engineer and tour manager, the iLive was the perfect choice for Phebus, who also specified iLive systems for his other clients Joe Bonamassa and King’s X.

Jay Phebus (middle) with Vertical Horizon

“It's a fraction of the setup time. The other day, I was busy and literally 15 minutes before sound check I hadn’t even entered the building. I walked in, put my iLive together, and was ready to rock. Nobody knew the difference,” Phebus explains. “The entire design is brilliant. We just run one CAT5 cable to FOH from the iDR rack on stage and we’re ready. At the end of the night, I can have the console down and in its case, literally within 3 minutes. Plus, the iLive-T112 is so much lighter than other consoles, I could actually grab the case and walk out the door if I had to.”

Commenting on iLive’s sonic performance, Phebus said:

“I first got into Allen & Heath consoles because they sound so great. It all starts with the preamps, and they just sound fantastic! The DSP engine has everything I could ask for and I literally have no need for any outboard gear. Of course, you can easily patch in your ‘must-have’ piece of gear, like an old Orban or Avalon, but for me the onboard effects are all I’ll ever need. The sound coming off the iLive is so good you could release it as a live album.”

A MADI plug-in card was added to the system to enable live recording on an Alesis HD24. Phebus set up the console in DCA groups, with one for vocals and keyboards, one for drums, one for bass, and another for guitars.

“I triple-save my setup every day – once on the console and two copies that go onto USB drives - 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.”

Having used almost every digital console on the market, Phebus is convinced that iLive is the smart choice, especially for those new to the world of digital mixing.

“The thing about iLive is it’s just so easy to use. The key is the dynamics section, which is 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 and eliminates that analogue-to-digital learning curve.”

“When Allen & Heath released the lower cost iLive-T models, the only thing you’re doing is committing to a configuration, and you’re getting ALL the processing power, ALL the effects. iLive does every single thing I want it to do and I couldn’t be happier. It is simply an exceptional product,” Phebus concludes.

Vertical Horizon, will be back on the road in February 2010.