Eyal Levi from Dååth shares why he uses Ampknobs live

From stage to studio, bands around the world trust Ampknob for their live sound. Acts like Fleshgod Apocalypse, Defecto, and Dååth rely on Ampknob to deliver the same precision, punch, and consistency on stage as in the studio. Every night, in every mix.

Please meet Eyal Levi. Guitarist, producer, and founding member of the technical death metal band Dååth. Beyond his work as a musician, Eyal is also one of the driving forces behind URM Academy and Nail The Mix, two of the most influential educational platforms for modern music production.

Through these, he has helped thousands of producers and engineers learn the craft of creating world-class metal records. With years of experience both behind the console and on stage, Eyal brings a unique perspective on how tools like Ampknob translate from the studio to the live environment.

We heard that you use plugins when you play live shows. Is this true?

That is absolutely true. For the last tour we did, which was earlier this year with Rivers Of Nihil, Cynic, and Beyond Creation (Europe 2025), we actually ran our entire show off a laptop with plugins. With the exception of our bass player's SansAmp pedal, that still went through the computer.

So yes, all of our guitar tones were plugins, and specifically, we used the Ampknob RevC for ALL of our rhythm tones. That plugin sounds INSANE live! I was kind of shocked because it was a complete leap of faith, but from the first power chord in the first sound check, warm relief spread all over me because I knew it was not just going to be ok, it was going to be sick. 

When did you take the leap and why? 

We (URM Academy) were filming a course with Buster Odeholm in late 2024, and I spent a week with him. During that week, he told me that Humanity's Last Breath's live show is run off of a laptop and that he's using amp sims. That got me thinking because Dååth uses tracks for the orchestra and synth, we play to a click track live, and we have in-ears. You know, a modern rig. This was also our first tour back in a long time, so I personally don't have the same kind of live rig like I used to have. We didn't have a band rig that had been tried and tested over the years. Dååth took a very long hiatus, and this was us getting back to it.

This might seem unintuitive because I know that people are very nervous about the idea of running their entire show off of a laptop, but I felt like taking variables out of the equation was the move. By variables, I mean lots of gear all plugged in because that's more points of failure.

So if everything could run off a laptop, that's less points of failure. Now, on top of that, I know this dirty little secret that actually isn't so secret, but amp sims these days sound amazing. They sound just as good as the hardware modelers do. And in a live setting, unless you're sitting or standing at the very, very front, you cannot tell the difference between a plugin, a modeller, or a real amp.

Why plugins instead of a hardware modeler?

As far as benefits go, well, everything has pros and cons. As you know, if everything is running through the computer and the computer goes down, everything goes down. So we had some semi-redundancy built into it. The session existed on more than one laptop, which we did have to use at one point in time. So we know that we can switch laptops and be a-ok.This way, I was also able to program the whole show before we even got together. The set list, the intro, the interludes, the patch changes, and the automations. I was able to get it 85% of the way there before we even met up. Now, keep in mind that we live in different countries across the ocean from each other, so it's not like me and the guys can just get together whenever we want. There had to be a lot of significant pre-planning and pre-production, and using plugins allowed that to happen.

Tell us about your set-up for running plugins!

The full setup for running the plug-ins obviously is a laptop with a DAW, plus everything that it goes out to, and then everything that feeds it.

So let's start with the computer. I just used my MacBook Pro M3 with the Reaper DAW. This is interesting because I used to make fun of Reaper users because they behave like cult members sometimes. But in reality, Reaper is a very good DAW; it's just different than all the other DAWs in that if you know Pro Tools or Cubase, it's very easy to switch to Pro Tools or Cubase or Logic or Studio One because they all have very similar design and operational philosophies. However, Reaper does its own thing; it takes more figuring out, it's less intuitive, and lots of things that are normal in a DAW it still does, but differently.

Buster, who I know uses Pro Tools in the studio, used Reaper live, and that got me curious - why would he use Reaper live if he's so used to Pro Tools? And he told me it's because of the stability. So I did my research and I found out that Reaper basically never crashes. I talked to people in the URM community, I went on forums, and I looked everywhere. I talked to people who run tracks live, and the consensus was that Reaper is about as stable as it gets. So why not learn how to use Reaper? The idea of going on stage with Pro Tools is a nightmare. As we all know, Pro Tools is not very stable. I know that it would crash, or it would at least stop playing partway through the set.

So I learned Reaper, and we used that. As far as the sample rate and buffer size go, this took a little bit of experimentation. Because we were playing live into the DAW and it was running our tracks, we couldn't just run it at 1024 due to latency. So we needed to be able to have the latency as low as possible, but also without it crashing out on us. I know from using my M3 that in my writing sessions, I'm able to run it at 64 for a long time before I need to bump to even 128. So we tried 64, and 64 actually worked really well for a while until we played a show that was super, super hot. My theory is that the heat stressed the laptop. The computer already heats up when it's doing intensive tasks, and the added heat from the club (I remember it was our London show, and it was basically a cloud of humidity) at that show caused intermittent audio dropouts.

I gotta say, despite the hiccups, Reaper never stopped, and keep in mind, Pro Tools probably would've just stopped. This is the stability issue I'm talking about. Anyway, what this also meant was that our click would have dropouts in our ears. So it was a bit confusing for us, but thankfully, we built some anchors into the backing tracks where there was a spoken track, which helped us know what was coming up in case of an emergency. But dropouts aside, it kept going. And once we realized what had happened, we just bumped it to 128 and never had a problem again.

As far as the sample rate goes, we just used 44.1. Why bother going higher than that? No real reason to in a live setting.

What interface do you use and how do you set it up?

For the interface, we used the Midas M32C. Guitars went into Shure GLD-X+ wireless systems that then went into a DI box and then into the Midas M32C, which would then send it to the laptop. The laptop would send it out to both a stage box, which would then go to FOH, but also to the Shure PSM1000 in-ear systems.It took a little while to figure it out, but it's actually not that complicated.

The most complicated thing was the M32 software.Word to the wise: if you're messing with the live routing with any of these systems, get to know the software well in advance because it's very, very confusing. We actually had some experts on the tour who were also confused by the software.

People who use this stuff every single day don't know every single thing about it. So if you're jumping into the world of in-ears and personal mixes on stage and you're using the Midas software or one that's compatible with it, learn the routing in advance.

Do you have a backup system for worst case scenarios?

Yes, we had the identical session and plugin set up on Rafael Trujillo's MacBook Pro in case mine broke or went down somehow. We actually did have to use it for a couple of shows because there was one point in the tour where this nasty pneumonia was basically ransacking the bus, and of course, I got it. I ended up having to stay in Finland for a couple of days for treatment while the tour went on.

I ended up flying to meet them in Italy a few days later, but during that time, they played without me, and they used the session on Rafael's computer, and it worked perfectly. So there you go.

How do you control the preset changes?

100% automation.

Tell us more about what you automate!

Everything is in the same project. Click track, the emergency spoken track, backing tracks, inputs with plug-ins, and automations… everything in a single project, and it's actually pretty minimal. I mean, it's just four inputs. We didn't have to run the drums through it. It was bass, two guitars, and vocals. Just four input tracks plus a couple more audio tracks. It's not that intensive.

I approached building the show the way I've always done, which is to first figure out a set list. Once you know the set list, figure out how much space you're going to want between songs. If it's a lot of space, will there be an interlude there, or will Sean Z (vocalist) speak? You make those decisions, map out the show, and then start building from there.

As far as lighting goes, we actually used to control our lights back in the day off of MIDI, and I suppose that if we were controlling lights off of MIDI, I would use the DAW for it. But to be honest, since this was our first tour back, I felt like just getting the audio side of it mastered was my goal, and luckily, in Europe, club lights are actually really good. In the United States, it's a different story. Club lights are actually usually pretty terrible. I wouldn't say that European club lights look as good as bringing your own light show, but they look good enough. That helped me feel good about the idea of just focusing on the audio.

With anything, you need to choose what your priorities are, and as nice as lights could be, if the audio is not good, then you have nothing. So that was my priority. In the future, if we are to use pre-programmed lights, which I don't see why we wouldn't, I'm going to research what the technology of the day is and try to implement that. I don't know if I would run MIDI through Reaper or use a separate program that's synced up. I just don't know yet. I'm not there yet.

On-stage, do you use a mix of monitors and in-ears?

100% in-ears.

Would you ever go back to using real amps/modelers on stage?

Never say never, but I do not foresee using real amps on stage again. On the off chance that the band gets really big and can have a lot of crew, I still don't know if we would use real amps because modelers and amp sims are just so pliable that they're perfect for live usage.

Now, as far as using hardware modelers, it just depends. Right now, our modus operandi is to have the rig be as light and easy as possible because we're not touring regularly. So, it needs to be something that can just be easy to pick up and go, and not have to worry about very much when we get together. The time that we do have together is better if we spend it rehearsing and actually working on music.

So, for now, the rig is going to be as simple as humanly possible. What we do in the future depends on the opportunities in front of us and what our band situation happens to be..

Dååth homepage: http://daathofficial.com 

Nail the Mix website: https://nailthemix.com

URM Academy website: https://urm.academy

URM on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@urmacademy

Eyal's  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eyalleviurmaudio