KENT, U.K. – SRD Group provided a sound reinforcement system for a 16,000-capacity outdoor classical music event that made use of Allen & Heath iLive digital hardware and its new DualRack capabilities.
The musical performances ranged from musical theater, military band, traditional choral and a performance by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Rigmy and accompanied by solists Wynn Evans (tenor), Elizabeth Watts (soprano) and Richard Morrison (baritone).
The evening was also narrated by actor Robert Powell, featured the marching band of the Brigade of Gurkhas, and included a fireworks and cannons finale.
"With crowd coverage extending 365 meters deep by 100 meters wide, and due to the predominantly orchestral material, audio requirements reached 180 inputs," noted SRD's MD, Stuart Roberts. "To compound this issue, the FOH footprint needed to be very compact due to crowd sightline issues," he added. "iLive was the obvious choice, as its flexible, distributed audio architecture makes it easy to build high capacity systems within a small footprint."
Sound engineer Ian Barfoot mixed the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on a separate system. He provided four stereo subgroups to both the FOH and Monitor consoles, which took pressure off the engineers and provided a better audio balance within the Orchestra.
The main FOH system consisted of an Allen & Heath iDR10 modular MixRack loaded with 64 inputs (56 analog and 8 digital) connected to an iLive-80 Control Surface with a mixture of analog and digital local outputs. There was an EtherSound digital split to the Monitor system, which included an iDR0 miniRack connected to an iLive-112 Control Surface with 24 analog local outputs.
The orchestra system consisted of two iDR10 MixRacks loaded with 128 inputs (120 analog and 8 digital) running in "DualRack" mode, feeding 16 digital outputs (8 digital feeds to the FOH system and 8 more to locally required outputs) with 16 analog outputs as backup.
All the MixRack and Control Surface connections, except the monitor system, were via Gigabit Network Smart Switches with fiber optic interfaces over deployable tactical fiber cable. WiFi networks were installed on all of three iLive systems to allow remote access to control functions via iLive's Editor control software. All the iLive systems and network interfaces were powered via UPS units for protection from variations and interruptions in the temporary AC supply.
"Everything worked according to plan," said Barfoot. "iLive is still one of the best sounding, most intuitive digital desks around, which is why it was chosen. With the added flexibility of ‘DualRack' mode, the channel count is doubled per system without compromise, making the choice of iLive even easier. After the event we received a lot of compliments from the artists taking part who remarked on the quality of the monitor sound, and to the best of our knowledge there were no complaints from the crowd regarding any issues with sound or coverage. We would definitely do it the same way again – the combination of good input sources with an excellent mixing console makes everyone's job much more simple."
For more information, please visit www.ilive-digital.com.
