Platform index / Digital mixing console
Allen & Heath dLive
Still essentially unexamined as a console — no firmware package, no silicon, no update path. What has been looked at is what its Director application writes to disk, and that turns out to be the Avantis format.
The load-bearing finding. The only thing examined here is dLive Director V2.11's show files, and they are the same shape as the Avantis': a gzipped tar of plain-text subsystem files with one nested tarball per scene, split into a stagebox half and a surface half. Nothing of the console itself — not its firmware, not its silicon, not its update path — has been looked at, and this page should not be read as if it had.
Verdict. Not a teardown, and it should not be mistaken for one. One question has been asked of this platform — what does its editor write to disk? — and the answer is that it writes the Avantis format, or something close enough that the difference has not shown up in the structure. That is worth recording because it makes a dLive show readable today, and because it is evidence that Allen & Heath run one show format across the range. It says nothing whatever about the console: what mixes, what the update package contains, whether it is signed, and how it compares to the SQ's FPGA-and-bare-metal design are all open, and this page will stay thin until someone opens the firmware.
Method
Inspection of the seven factory shows shipped inside dLive Director V2.11, compared structurally against the Avantis shows the same work covers. Nothing else: no firmware package was obtained, no hardware was inspected, and none of the Avantis findings has been re-derived on a dLive file.
Artifacts examined
- The seven factory shows inside dLive Director V2.11 — FoH, Monitors, Surround, MultiSurface FoH and Mon, and FoH LCRplus
No manufacturer firmware, binaries or documentation are redistributed here. Artifacts are referenced by name and version only. See the method and legal statement for the basis on which this analysis was performed and the boundaries it observes.
Hardware architecture
| Item | Finding | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| What has been examined | Nothing. No firmware package has been obtained, no console has been opened or inspected, and no part number on this platform has been established by us. The larger sibling to the SQ and the Avantis, and unexamined next to both | Unknown |
Software architecture
| Item | Finding | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| What Director writes | dLive Director V2.11 ships seven factory shows in the same structure as the Avantis: a gzipped tar, subsystem folders whose small files are plain text, and one nested tarball per scene split into a stagebox half and a surface half | Verified |
| Almost certainly the Avantis format — but only almost | The structure matches and the two Directors are plainly the same application family, so the Avantis findings (the live state living in scene 65535, the input patch being global rather than scene data, the three-byte Channel Mapper entries) are the reasonable expectation here. None of them has been checked against a dLive file, no byte-for-byte comparison has been made, and a larger console is exactly where a shared format is most likely to differ in its dimensions | Inferred |
Update path & security model
| Item | Finding | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Not examined | No update package has been obtained, so nothing is known about how this platform validates or signs its firmware. The SQ and the Avantis both ship unsigned images with integrity checks only; whether the flagship follows them is a question, not an inference | Unknown |
These rows describe how a platform validates a firmware image, because that is a structural fact about its architecture. They are not a vulnerability disclosure and no exploit, bypass or circumvention technique is published here. Licensing and entitlement mechanisms are out of scope throughout — seescope boundaries.
What is programmable
- 1The show file, and nothing else yet
The only surface examined on this platform. It is a tar of gzipped tars with self-labelling scene blobs, so reading a dLive show is a solved problem the moment someone checks the Avantis findings against a dLive file. Everything else here — the firmware, the update path, whatever does the mixing — is unopened.
Traps
Mistakes this analysis actually made, or came close to making. They are recorded because each one produces a plausible-looking wrong answer rather than an obvious failure.
- Reading a sibling's findings onto this page. Everything below the show format on this platform is inference from the SQ and the Avantis, and it is deliberately not written here as if it were established. The entry stays thin on purpose.
Open questions
- Whether the show format really is the Avantis'. The structures match; nothing has been compared byte for byte, and the Channel Mapper's stride and type codes have not been confirmed on a dLive file.
- Everything about the console itself — the update package and whether it is signed, what the mixing runs on, how the surface talks to it, and whether the SQ's or the Avantis' architecture is the closer relative.
Status of this entry. Substantial findings recorded, but whole subsystems remain unexamined. Nothing on this page has been verified against physical hardware — no unit of this platform has been opened, connected to or modified.