British comedian Russell Howard’s ‘in-the-round’ tour saw Adlib supply audio and lighting for the UK arena leg – the largest to date for the highly-acclaimed stand-up.

Adlib’s audio team was led by George Puttock who worked with Howard’s FOH engineer, Simon Lawson. Puttock specified a Coda Audio AiRay loudspeaker system for a number of different reasons; its unrivalled light weight, its excellent sound quality and projection, as well as the precise horizontal control. The fact it is quick and easy to rig was an added bonus for the crew. The core system comprised of eight hangs of eight AiRay, boxes with eight ViRay boxes for each down fill. These were flown either side of four LED screens rigged at cardinal points about the stage.

Each day a completely bespoke variation of this system was rigged and optimised to suit the conditions and nuances of the room, to deliver the punch lines to every seat in the house.

Coda Audio’s Linus 10 amplifiers were suspended from an inner truss placed in a square behind the eight hangs, to facilitate neat cable management and short speaker cable runs. In addition to Coda Audio’s Linus Live control software, Adlib designed a bespoke power control and monitoring solution providing individual control and monitoring of each amplifier from the ground. ‘We couldn’t risk having any circuit breakers in the air, with the inability to reset them mid-show,’ Puttock explains.

Audio was transported using Coda’s LiNet signal distribution system, primarily for its absolute zero latency and high resilience. LiNet was also perfect due to the long cable runs often encountered in getting to the centre of the arena from the control position.

All the processing and control was managed in the flown amplifiers; the signal being sent there from the DiGiCo SD9 FOH console. An SD11 was provided as a backup console, with a Spirit Folio for a completely discreet analogue backup.

Howard doesn’t use IEMs, so six Coda TiRay boxes were flown on the ‘east’ and ‘west’ sides of the stage for monitoring. Twelve further TiRay boxes positioned around the lip of stage provided front-fill, their tiny form factor being ideal for sight-lines and the cameras.  The artist specified his own mic, which was a wireless Shure Beta SM58.

Puttock worked alongside a solid Adlib team of Tony Szabo, Simon Lawson, Billy Bryson, Steph Fleming and Antonio Calvi. He engaged in a serious amount of advance work beforehand, knowing that all the venues were very different and the PA would have to change to suit day-to-day.

‘Using this Coda AiRay system was the best solution for this scenario because it’s so predictable,’ he says. ‘It does exactly what the software tells you it’s going to do and that makes for a very easy day on site.’

With this reassurance, he could concentrate on his first essential job each day; thoroughly checking the position of the rigging points and adjusting the ‘plan’ to take into account any unforeseen eventualities accordingly.

‘Splendid and tremendous,’ Puttock reprts, ‘It was a great tour, extremely well organised with harmony from all departments. The crew and the system delivered and there was lots of laughter throughout, both from the audience and from the crew.’

A wireless multicore was run to stage using a pair of Ubiquiti Bullets to create a 5GHz WIFI network – one located on the cable bridge with the Luminex nodes and one under the stage with another node. The data comfortably travelled this height every day and the system proved very reliable as well as saving at least 30 minutes a day on cabling. A GreenGo wireless comms system was run out to the four follow spot positions, with the GreenGo antenna also sitting at the end of the cable bridge, which saved having to run out more than 400m of XLR cabling daily.

A standard analogue TechPro comms system was also used for the show, as the distances made it more efficient to run cables for this element of the production.

‘We’ve had a really busy 2017 so far, with lots of comedy projects on tour,’ says Adlib Client Manager, Phil Kielty. ‘It’s always good to push boundaries and we’ve also been thrilled with the results of the Coda PA in-the-round on this one.

‘We’re fortunate enough to have been involved with Russell for nearly ten years now, I first saw him performing at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool around 2007 and I am still a massive fan. Adlib thrives in a comedy environment and Russell and the team at Avalon all strive to be the best at what they do – so it’s a great match. Our thanks to James Taylor and Bjorn Wentlandt at Avalon and Tour Manager Kumar Kamalagharan for another excellent arena tour.’