Kev Allen has been the monitor engineer for the Stranglers for the past three and a half years. A bass player turned audio engineer, Allen learned early on that sound quality was something that he needed to insist on for every one of his projects. When Allen & Heath came out with the ILive series, he was sceptical at first, but after getting to know the board he fell in love with it and decided to buy one of his own – the ILive-144 control surface and IDR10 Mix Rack.

Allen & Heath boasts that it created the ILive digital range to put audio processing in the hands of the user. The board’s DSP is housed in the Mix Rack, providing minimum latency and giving the user the chance to custom configure the desk. Each of the board’s input channels features a gate, parametric eq, compressor, limiter/de-esser and delay, and all mix outputs have a one-third-octave graphic eq, parametric eq, compressor, limiter and delay.

Allen states that the main asset of his ILive desk is the fact that someone has really put thought and time into it. “It has great, quirky little features that make you fall in love with it. For instance, the chorus box is designed to look like something you would find in a second-hand shop circa 1985. Other boards don’t have that type of character and it shows you that whoever designed it really understood what engineers needed and wanted, rather than being someone who was stuck in a sterile R&D department cranking out another product.
“It seems they thought about how users want to see a channel strip and put everything under your fingertips with big knobs like analog consoles.”

Allen has used the board for numerous applications from theatre productions to folk and reggae gigs. “In the reggae and folk world you are dealing with some very old-school people, but still anyone who has used the board has loved it,” he explains.

Another space-saving feature that Allen loves is ILive’s
multicore, which is simply a pair of Cat 5 cables. “I worked it out and, when you add up all the numbers, not having a great big copper multicore, a big, heavy analog desk and racks saves up to a third of a ton. With margins as tight as they are these days, it not only cuts down on the amount of weight in the tour bus, but it also cuts down on space and the number of crew you need.”

Getting down to the nuts and bolts of the board, Allen was initially most impressed with the board’s compressors.
“For this gig I am not using the compressors,” he notes, “but when I have used them it was like having a rack of dbx 160s. I can put up to 20dB of compression on a channel and it stays under control, but it isn’t too heavy.”

One major factor that the ILive provides for the Stranglers’ tour specifically is predictability. When the band comes on stage they know what they are going to get. Allen explains:
“For this tour it is four guys on the stage for the whole show. I find it better for me if the shows are not automated, because it allows me to listen and understand and see what is going on during the show. I don’t have to make big on or off changes like I would on a theatre production. Some nights the drummer wants six dB more of the keys than he ever wanted before, because it is a very dead venue or the keyboard player isn’t playing as loud as he usually does. I have to learn everyone’s signals and have those features at my fingertips.”

Despite the many changes he has to make during the show, Allen jokes that sometimes the board makes it so easy that he finds it hard to stay awake. “There are two songs where I hardly have to do anything and I have to keep myself from nodding off,” he laughs.

Although Allen didn’t use the board’s scene feature for the tour, it is capable of storing different configurations for each song on a USB key. All parameters available on the board can be saved, updated and recalled, which enables engineers to carry their settings and libraries with them for upload on any ILive console.

Allen reports that the band is very happy with the board as well and, due to its successful performance, they push to have it on the tour. Allen comments that having the ILive with them not only gives them the same results every night, but it saves them from having to sound check at each venue. Instead, the crew can check all the signals and get things sorted for them before they walk on stage.

Allen earned his chops doing wiring jobs at studios like Cornwall’s Airfield studio. It was there that he realised the importance of being critical of each piece of gear he comes across. “When I was installing the Quested monitors in Airfield and started playing around with the crossover amps, I quickly realised that, although everything on a spec sheet may make a product seem like it can do the job, it is important to try out every piece of gear and have a great attention to detail. I always go back to the ILive because it has everything I need and I am able to set it up how I want.

“This is another reason why I bought the ILive. If a project’s financial constraints are such that I have to use a heavy pile of rubbish because that is what everyone has in their factories, then sorry, I would rather not do it. Sometimes I get paid rather well because I have supplied my own board and sometimes I haven’t, but if I am forced to use a board that is going to screw up the sound, well, sorry my job is to make the things sound better. If a product is standing in the way of achieving that goal then I would rather not use it.”

Tighter margins on the touring sector have forced consoles to get smaller and include fewer features on the surface. Allen feels that Allen & Heath has figured out a way to make a compact board with all the available features on board for the user to twist, turn, punch and push. He is eager to bring his ILive with him on every tour because he knows it is a peach that will deliver the same results every time and in his words: “It is a dream to use.”
www.ilive-digital.com