Britannia Row Productions has purchased 13 Dolby Lake Processors for loudspeaker management on the Robbie Williams: Close Encounters worldwide stadium tour.
Britannia Row’s Jerry Wing
The Dolby Lake Processors were chosen to support Britannia Row’s current L-Acoustics V-DOSC and dV-DOSC loudspeaker system inventory, much of which is now being used on the Williams tour. Britannia Row tour sales manager, Roly Oliver, says, “At Britannia Row, we service very high-profile clients with the latest technologies from only the best equipment manufacturers. We did extensive research and evaluation of processors in the market and found that the Dolby Lake Processor was the most future-proof processing technology available. Support from Dolby’s live sound group and its UK distributor, Out Board, has also been outstanding.”
Each Dolby Lake Processor unit on the tour is configured with 4-in/12-out analog modules. The full stadium system complement for the tour, specified by system engineer Sherif el Barbari, includes three units at each side of the stage, one at each of six possible delay tower locations and a single 8-in/8-out unit at front of house to collect the various mix and submix signals from the DiGiCo consoles and distribute them throughout the system.
“The DLP system is the most advanced and the best-sounding system I’ve ever came across, with the best user interface and the greatest potential for convenience in operator control facilities,” says el Barbari.
Audio signals are fed from front of house as AES3 digital, with a redundant backup analog signal going to the stage and all the delay tower locations. The processor’s auto-sense facility is set to instantly switch over to the analog feed if it detects any loss of the AES3 audio feed.
Dolby Lake Controller software communicates to all the units via a dual-redundant wired Ethernet loop emanating from a network switch at FOH, with a rackmount PC serving as the primary Dolby Lake Controller master. For roaming wireless control, a tablet PC runs as a secondary Dolby Lake Controller and links to the network via multiple distributed wireless access points. Several remote access points are installed at various delay tower locations and bridged back to a master access point at FOH, which then ports into the network switch.
Williams’ front-of-house engineer, Dave Bracey, sums up the appeal of the Dolby Lake Processor: “It’s the most amazing-sounding P.A. I’ve heard in my life.”
To learn more, visit www.dolby.com/livesound. For additional touring news, visit mixonline.com/livesound/tours/.
