SNL Pro’s dLive weekender
Published: ASIA
INDIA: The Bacardi NH7 Weekender is an annual music festival organised by Only Much Louder (OML) that tours India, showcasing a mix of established and emerging local artists as well as major international stars. During the 2016 edition, the RBDSA Sports Complex in the town of Bhoirymbong, just outside Shillong, served as one of the festival’s venues for two nights and Sound & Light Professionals (SNL Pro) provided the sound reinforcement on the main Bacardi Stage. SNL Pro has offered its services to the festival every year since OML conceived it in 2010.
With between 10,000 and 12,000 spectators reportedly drawn to the Bacardi Stage, SNL Pro opted to deploy its recently purchased Allen & Heath dLive S7000 system, primarily due to the event's 'technically diverse' requirements for monitoring onstage. The rental company obtained the dLive system with a DM64 rack from Delhi-based distributor Sun Infonet.
As the team from SNL Pro had little practise with the new console, the distributor invited Allen & Heath’s product manager, Leon Phillips, to provide assistance alongside its own product manager, Rohit Reddy. Meanwhile, Madhur Hastikar served as the band mix engineer during the set of the headlining act: Bollywood singer actor Farhan Akhtar. Mr Hastikar had also never used an S7000 console before, but following some training from Mr Phillips and Mr Reddy, soon reportedly got comfortable with using it.
‘I had a limited amount of time to get acquainted with the S7000 surface,’ said Mr Hastikar. Firstly the ample amount of headroom the engine has to offer is simply remarkable, it was interesting when Leon urged me to push the levels a little harder and the audio still remained as pure as before. The design of the rotary controllers feels very intuitive and the response is similar to that of an analogue desk which makes the dialling parameters and gain a whole lot smoother. The capacitive touch screen, which offers control to that of an iPad makes the GUI very intuitive. But all of this wouldn’t have been possible without the invaluable support from Leon and Rohit who made sure that everything run in harmony and pull off a spectacular show without so much as a glitch.’
‘With the dLive S7000, my team was confident that it would be able to cover each section of the stage and all the support from Allen & Heath and Sun Infonet put us more at ease,’ confirmed SNL Pro owner Manish Mavani.’