I’d like to share my first experience with the dLive, which happened back in 2017.
The Italian importer offered me to try out the (at that time) recently released S7000. He had it delivered at my front door and I set it up in my living room and played with it for 10 days. I was already in my 13th year on tour with Nile Rodgers & CHIC, so I loaded a live multitrack and started setting up a show, including the different scenes on the set list. After a week or so, I started to feel comfortable bout the surface, as well as the excellent sound, so I built the show and saved it on a USB drive, just in case I should ever have an S7000 in the future.
After a few weeks, we were schedule to play at Glastonbury that summer and during the production advance, the festival production staff asked me if we were bringing our own desks, so I thought I should ask the Italian distributor if he could help and he immediately put me in touch with A&H UK, which happily accepted to supply two S7000’s for both FOH and monitors.
As most of us know, festivals such as Glastonbury don’t always allow a real sound check, but only a quick line check during the set change. I was very used to this, having mixed over 200 shows with CHIC without a sound check, but always on other brands and models and never with a dLive, so my only concern was that was my very first time with an S7000 and most importantly, in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming festival goers. When it was our turn to hit the stage, I loaded the file I had saved at home and the monitor and I went though our quick line check, then our intro started and the band walked on stage and…one..two… What happened during the following 90 minutes was absolute magic…I felt like I was still sitting in my living room again, with everything coming up perfectly balanced. Only a few minor gain and eq tweaks and there was my show! Unbelievable, but true. I am very thankful to A&H in Italy and the UK for their incredible support.