Ontario, Canada (May 20, 2024)—Florida-based FOH engineer Michael Urbizu recently headed to the Great White North to give Arm’s Length a hand on tour. The rising emo act hit the road across Canada and the U.S. on a package run with labelmates Carly Cosgrove and Ben Quad, and Urbizu came armed and ready to give the band a leg up with an Allen & Heath dLive system.
Urbizu had worked with them before, mixing the group on house consoles during previous tours, but this time, he wanted to have his fingers on the pulse when it came to reaching the group’s audio goals. With an eye on maintaining night-to-night consistency for the band’s shows, the group’s management agreed to carry a mic and console package, so Urbizu opted for a compact dLive CTi1500 control surface, along with a CDM48 MixRack for processing and I/O.
“I knew the band’s trailer would already be packed with full-sized amps and cabs,” he explained. “I was also conscious of the fact that some of these venues were smaller and there wouldn’t be much room at front-of-house. Thankfully, I could fit into anywhere with that CTi1500 surface.”
Mitch Rowland Hits The Road
While the CTi1500 has a single 12-fader bank, Urbizu squeezed more out of it by using the dLive’s DCA Spill function, which dynamically updates the fader layout to show channels in a selected DCA group. “I also liked how I can customize the different layers. I kept my groups on the bottom layer along with my FX and master busses,” he noted.
Since he hadn’t used the desk before, Urbizu prepped by watching video tutorials online and was ready to dig in deep once the desk arrived. “When I actually got to use the mixer, I tried out as many different compressors as I could during sound check to see which ones I liked,” he said. The overall experience was enough that he’s hoping to take the diminutive desk out on his next tour as well.
