03 January 2010

Drummer Boy Sound puts the Live in iLive-T

Harold Cummings is the founder and CEO of Drummer Boy Sound, a Miami-area production company. “After I did a couple demos on the new iLive-T, I was blown away with what it could do, especially for such a great price. Our roots are in live sound, and we do a lot of high-profile events around Miami,” he notes. “When I began using the console at those shows, I can’t tell you what a difference it made. Small footprint, easy and fast to set up, no outboard gear… and it sounds fantastic!”

One of the first events Cummings did with his iLive-T and iDR-48 MixRack was the National Day of Prayer at Miami’s Faith Center, which seats about 4,000. The event was also recorded by the Telemundo network. “A situation came up,” recalls Cummings, “where a guest musician taking the stage inadvertently crossed through my cordoned off power management area and tripped the power to the iLive-T control surface. But, since the mix engine is in the iDR-48 MixRack which has redundant power supplies, we never lost any audio. All mics and speakers stayed live. I restored power, and in less than a minute, the control surface was rebooted with all settings in place. The band started the next song and never missed a beat, pretty amazing. The audience never knew. It was seamless, and it proved to me what a well-engineered piece of gear this is. I turned into a total iLive fan at that point!”

Operationally, Cummings uses the DCA groups of the iLive, usually dividing the music presentation into three or four groups. “I put my drums on DCA1, keys on DCA2 and vocals on DCA3. That leaves DCA4 open for anything else I need.” Cummings is also a fan of the operational design of the iLive. “Just hitting ‘Select’ and having that channel in front of me is a great idea. It lets me work quickly and gives the board an analog feel.” Asked to explain what he means by that, Cummings explains, “With an iLive, you can work by ear. You don’t need to use a screen to get the board to work properly. The screen is very useful, especially for tweaking the details of limiting, compression and EQ. But it’s not necessary to run the board, so I can pay attention to what’s happening on stage without worrying about where I am on the board.”

As a company that does both live events and installations, Drummer Boy Sound is always working to provide high-end sound quality while keeping costs under control. “The preamps and the effects on the iLive sound fantastic, like a high-end analog desk,” he says. “The sound that I get coming straight off the board is amazing. I record straight to my MacBook Pro out of the matrix, and it’s ridiculous how clean and even the recordings sound. I don’t have to tweak it on the record side at all, just do a stereo matrix out, set the input so it’s at a non-distorted level, and go. When I send my clients a CD of their event, they are just blown away. That’s the kind of difference the iLive has made for me.”

With the experience he’s gained using the iLive-T 112 at live events around Miami, Drummer Boy Sound has come to appreciate the flexibility of Allen & Heath’s design. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” says Harold Cummings. Originally, I was sold on this desk as the perfect installation console for the church market, because of its price point, its feature set and sound quality. But using it on live event productions, I saw how much of a weapon the iLive really is. My plan is to buy two of them, and a third one down the line. They are that good.”