As frontman of the band, H-Blockx and singer of one of Germany’s top bands, Sohne
Mannheims, Henning Wehland has enjoyed great success. His recent solo tour “Der
Letzte an der Bar (Last Man At The Bar)’ relies on an Allen & Heath dLive for Front Of
House and a GLD-80 for monitors.
Technical director and FOH engineer Ansgar Friemel has been using Allen & Heath
consoles for many years and for this diverse production he felt the dLive C Class
C2500 system was the perfect fit.
“The big challenge of this production is the bandwidth of gigs we play, from street
parties to the big festivals,’ says Friemel. “We needed a very flexible console at FOH
which integrates into various Dante or MADI networks easily – and dLive delivers it
all. I also love that dLive gets better with every firmware update. Allen & Heath listens
to their users and constantly optimises the mixing workflow.’
A central element to the stage is a recreation of a bar counter. In addition to providing
an interesting stage design for the story of the production, the counter also hosts the
complete monitoring setup including an Allen & Heath GLD-80 as monitor desk and a
KLANG:fabrik from KLANG: technologies for 3D in-ear monitoring.
“We use the GLD-80 and KLANG:fabrik in a Dante network plus a 24bit/96kHz
gigaACE netzwork for FOH,’ Friemel explains, “On top, we can also use MADI to run
virtual soundchecks, multitrack recordings or deliver signals to an OB van.”
As Henning Wehland sings in German, vocal clarity and intelligibility is extremely
important – and can often be a real mixing challenge.
“We use lots of parallel compression in the mix groups to tame Henning’s voice and
make it clearly understandable even in dense and complex songs,” explains Friemel.
“dLive has so many great dynamic tools like the PeakLimiter 76, the 16T, the slow-
opto compressor or the multiband dynamics. But we also use the other effects a lot,
like the plate reverbs, the De-Esser, Transient Controller or the Echo.’
“I can recommend dLive to every live sound engineer,” Friemel continues. “dLive’s
open bus structure and powerful FGPA core allows you configure the desk for many
different application, from FOH and monitors to corporate or theatre.’
Friemel also uses various microphones from Audio-Technica for the drumset.
“We have an ATM350 on the snare which is great for high and low-mid frequencies
and has a perfect mounting system,” says Friemel. “For the floor tom and snare
bottom, we use an ATM230 which deliver a very full and natural sound. For capturing
atmospheres, we use two AT897 which create very detailed and nice image of the
stage sound for monitor mix or live recordings.’
