From Ashes to New tour adopts Allen & Heath dLive for FOH and monitors
Background and context
Front-of-house engineer and tour manager Taylor “Squid” Veraldi has moved from studio work into full-time touring, building his experience on a wide range of house consoles. That background is now informing his approach to the current US tour by rock band From Ashes to New.
Veraldi joined the band’s crew in 2018 after previous touring work with one of the group’s vocalists. As the band’s live shows have grown in scale and complexity, their audio requirements have shifted from generic digital consoles to a more integrated, touring-focused system.
Those needs led Veraldi and the band to Allen & Heath’s dLive platform, which now underpins both front-of-house (FOH) and monitor mixing for the tour.
Key announcement
The current From Ashes to New tour is running on a dLive system built around an Allen & Heath DM64 MixRack, an S5000 control surface at FOH, and a compact C1500 surface handling monitors and playback duties.
Veraldi first encountered the dLive S5000 while mixing monitors for another band, and subsequently recommended the move when From Ashes to New started to outgrow their previous console. He cites the platform’s flexible workflow, audio quality and surface customisation as reasons for the change.
He makes extensive use of dLive’s DYN8 processing for dynamic EQ and multiband compression, particularly for controlling cymbal spill across vocal and instrument microphones and managing vocal harshness. Scene scope controls and user-assignable SoftKeys are also used to automate elements such as delay throws, filtered vocal effects and complex guitar panning, reducing the amount of manual intervention required during the show.
A key operational factor for the tour is that all audio processing resides in the DM64 MixRack on stage, rather than in the control surfaces. Veraldi notes that, during a previous power loss at FOH, audio continued to pass through the system until the S5000 rebooted, avoiding a full show stoppage.
The C1500 surface, originally brought in to cover monitors before the band had a dedicated monitor engineer, doubles as a flexible option for fly dates or smaller shows where a compact FOH footprint is required.
Looking ahead, the production is evaluating an additional DM0 MixRack loaded with RackUltra FX to increase processing headroom and access a wider palette of onboard effects, including saturation, harmonisation and amp-style processing. The extra MixRack would also provide more buses for routing options such as front fills and parallel processing paths.
Industry impact
The setup illustrates how mid-scale touring acts are standardising on networked ecosystems rather than single consoles, using shared engines to support both FOH and monitor positions. For engineers operating in modern rock and metal genres, where shows often feature wide dynamic ranges, rapid transitions and dense arrangements, the combination of dynamic processing and automation has become a core requirement.
Veraldi’s approach to frequency management also reflects current live sound practice. Instead of treating harshness or build-up only at the most obvious source, he reduces overlapping frequencies on other channels that do not require them, creating space in the mix through subtractive EQ across multiple sources.
From Ashes to New’s touring rig demonstrates how features once associated with higher-end systems—scene-based workflows, granular routing, and advanced FX—are now being deployed in more compact packages that can travel efficiently and adapt to a range of venues.
Why this matters
For production teams and rental houses, the From Ashes to New tour highlights how a single, scalable platform can cover FOH, monitors and playback while maintaining redundancy and keeping the physical footprint manageable.
Engineers considering console investments for touring rock acts may look to similar configurations: a central MixRack handling processing, paired with surfaces sized to each position and show type. The planned addition of a second MixRack with enhanced FX also points to a trend toward building modular, expandable systems rather than replacing entire consoles as productions grow.
Further technical details on the dLive range, including MixRacks, S-Class and C-Class surfaces, and RackUltra FX options, are available from Allen & Heath’s official product pages at allen-heath.com.
