British Indie veterans, Kaiser Chiefs, have recently completed their mammoth UK tour, accompanied by an Allen & Heath dLive system handling both FOH and monitor duties. The tour follows on from the band’s recent announcement of their brand-new album and took a nostalgic look back at past releases and hits; gracing the stages of old theatres, concert halls, seaside towns and of course, O2 Academy venues.
Supplied by Adlib, the band’s set-up includes two dLive S7000 surfaces on both FOH and monitors and two DM64 MixRacks. The system was also used to handle audio needs for the support band, Novacub.
“For this tour I chose dLive in spite of having had no experience of it before, as a number of people I respect have rated it very highly!” comments FOH engineer, Chris Leckie. “As with every Kaiser Chiefs outing since 2007 I’m using Liverpool’s Adlib as our audio vendor. As well as having something of a connection to the company, I’m always inclined to pick them simply because the crew are always great and the equipment is immaculate.”
Leckie continues, “One of the most important factors for me in selecting any console is the simplicity of operation and dLive is so intuitive that I was able to work out how to do almost everything I needed within about 10 minutes.”
Ilias Andrianatos (monitor engineer), has been with the band since 2005 and for this tour also opted for dLive, explaining “Like Chris, I also chose dLive as some of my respected colleagues suggested that I give it a go.”
Andrianatos adds, “I love how user-friendly and easily customisable the whole rig is. The surface makes perfect sense in terms of layout and there’s a very straight forward and logical way of setting the desk up, making it easy to patch I/O, assign PAFL, FX and set up soft keys.”
This is a feeling further supported by Leckie, who comments, “dLive has a certain familiarity in appearance and the operation of the effects and compressors was another factor in my choice. The S7000 hasn’t put a foot wrong in the four weeks I’ve been using it – it certainly gives other manufacturers some stiff competition! I’m going to be taking this desk around with me for the whole summer period.”
Andrianatos adds, “dLive has an amazing sound quality and natural, smooth sounding FX. I use the 16VU compressor on bass and acoustic guitar, the 16T compressor on keys and OHs and the Mighty compressor on kicks and snares. I also enjoy using the Dyn8’s Dynamic EQ and Multiband compression on guitars and vocals.”
The full audio team for Kaiser Chiefs consists of; Chris Leckie (FOH engineer), Kenny Perrin (FOH tech), Ilias Andrianatos (monitor engineer) and Marc Peers (monitor tech).
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