London, UK (October 21, 2026)—With no nearby parking or power available for an OB truck, Spiritland Productions came up with a unique approach to simultaneously cut a live performance of Max Richter’s Hamnet soundtrack to vinyl at Abbey Road Studios, six miles away.
To meet the challenges, award-winning production company Spiritland Productions deployed a Solid State Logic System T TCA Flypack at Southwark Cathedral, where a specially assembled orchestra and the Tenebrae choir, with Richter at the piano, performed the score live for the first time.
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Rather than moving audio off-site, Spiritland deployed the processing on-site and moved only the control data. A pair of redundant SSL T25 Tempest Engines were deployed at Southwark Cathedral, handling the full mix locally at low latency, while a PC running TCA software provided control of the Flypack system. Six miles away at Abbey Road Studios, engineer Rupert Coulson operated the mix remotely from an SSL S500 control surface, with every adjustment transmitted across the public internet while the audio processing remained at the cathedral.
The Flypack handled a line list that ran to around 120 inputs at 96 kHz. Total control data bandwidth across the link was approximately 40 Mbps, consisting of the control stream plus a small number of audio feeds. Redundancy was provided by the cathedral’s house internet connection, two bonded Starlink terminals deployed outside and two 4G boosters, making a total of five IP connections.
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“As far as Rupert was concerned, he was using the SSL surface in the truck as if we were parked outside,” says Spiritland director Antony Shaw. “There was no obvious latency. There was probably between 30 and 40 milliseconds of delay between moving a fader and hearing a difference on the return feed, which for that kind of slow-moving, swelling music was neither here nor there.”
From the truck, a Dante-connected stagebox fed the stereo master into Abbey Road’s cutting chain. Multitrack machines at Abbey Road were also under remote control from the truck, allowing virtual sound check to proceed as normal.
“Rupert walked away saying that it sounded as good as the album,” Shaw reports.
