Use Cases

For more than two decades, huge crowds have gathered at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami at the tail end of March for Ultra Music Festival, a massive three-day party with the world’s hottest and biggest EDM artists providing the live playlist. As the culmination of the annual Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week, the festival has long flown L-Acoustics loudspeakers on a number of its stages. But this year marked the first time Unreal-Systems/AgorÀ USA was tasked with providing audio for the Main Stage, and the company deployed an enormous K1-based rig to keep the nightly crowd of 55,000 dancing.

Dead & Company’s 2022 Summer Tour, which kicked off in June at Dodge Stadium in Los Angeles, was supported by a reinforcement system headed by Meyer Sound’s new PANTHER large-format line array loudspeaker. PANTHER is the first line array system to offer AVB Milan™ protocol network connection directly to the loudspeaker cabinet. The band’s 2022 tour proceeds eastward with 20 shows scheduled in 16 cities, wrapping up at Citi Field in New York on July 16. Of the tour venues, four are Major League Baseball stadiums, one an NFL stadium, and one college football stadium, with the balance at larger sheds.

PEARL (Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory) is a massive space in which you can create life-sized environments – a railway station, high street, town square – to examine how people interact with the environment and other people in these types of places. Audio has arguably the most important role to play in convincing participants that the environmental role they’re playing is realistic. PEARL’s technical services manager, Joe Boxshall, chose to use L-Acoustics’ L-ISA spatial audio technology for this reason. Boxshall describes PEARL as “a real showcase” for Milan-AVB, being the networking element of the L-Acoustics solution. “With the Milan-AVB protocol,” he says, “as long as you’ve got some fibre to patch to, you can plug in anywhere in this building and it will work. It provides the ultimate flexibility: if I’ve got amplifiers here, I’ve got speakers. This comes from our world of theatres and concert halls where we’re used to having to run around and re-plug things.”

In South Africa’s second-most populous city, GrandWest is home to various dining establishments, an ice rink, and the renowned Grand Arena—a 5,000 capacity multi-purpose venue that has played host to world-famous acts such as Bryan Adams, Sting, James Blunt, Rammstein, and Kylie Minogue. In 2020, the venue underwent a complete refit of its PA system, with L-Acoustics K Series chosen for its ability to fulfill international touring riders and deliver the highest quality audio for many years to come. System processing is via two of LP1 processors, with four LS10 switches providing the highest quality Milan-AVB signal distribution to the LA12X and LA4X amplified controllers powering the system. Two DiGiCo Quantum 338 consoles with two SD-Racks fitted with 32-Bit cards handle mixing duties.

JWinner of 13 consecutive Pollstar Awards for Outstanding Outdoor Venue since 2004, Hollywood Bowl is the summer home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and has been LA's signature live-music venue for nearly a century. A Milan/AVB system was installed in 2018, including 18 AVB (and Milan)-ready L-Acoustics LA12X and ten LA4X amplified controllers, completely refreshing and updating the Bowl's power infrastructure, and optimizing the performance of its K1/Kara system. "What the new amplified controllers also do is bring a new level of authority to the sound of the system. There has been a noticeable improvement in resolution and fidelity to the system since we installed them before our current season began. The sound, which was always great through the K1 system, is now spectacular."

A crowd of more than 58,000 gathered at the Avicii tribute concert at Friends Arena, in Stockholm, Sweden, in December 2019. System optimization and drive was supplied by 16 Meyer Sound GALAXY 816 and three GALAXY 816-AES3 processors linked via an AVB network running the Milan protocol. As for the AVB network and Milan protocol, there wasn't much to say, according to Audio Systems Tech Anton Söderberg. "It's been rock solid," he said. "Everything pops up on the screen and works like it's supposed to."

More than 80,000 Irish fans attended Ed Sheeran’s two shows in late April 2022 at Dublin’s Croke Park Stadium. Sheeran’s fourth world tour also marked the global premiere of Meyer Sound’s new PANTHER large-format linear line array loudspeaker. Supplied by U.K.-based Major Tom, Ltd. and suspended from daringly conceived mast and cable net rigging, the system was anchored by 212 PANTHER loudspeakers. The Dublin shows also were the first anywhere to deploy a Milan protocol AVB network from FOH mix all the way to the loudspeaker cabinets. The primary, Milan Certified GALAXY 816 Network Platform at FOH connects to a Milan End Point (MEP) network, configured as a star topology, which consists of one GALAXY 816 platform, three GALAXY 408 platforms, and 20 Luminex Gigacore 26i switches. As failover backup, the always-active parallel analog inputs were connected via a primary and secondary redundant Milan network with dedicated GALAXY units.

Opened in 2021, the YouTube Theater is a 6000-seat live performance space in Inglewood, California. The audio system leverages a Milan AVB audio network made up of L-Acoustics P1, LA12X, LA2Xi, as well as a Meyer Sound GALAXY and Luminex switches.

The Millenium Centre, a newly established privately-operated venue in Lausanne, Switzerland, offers an extensive range of services and boosts state-of-the-art entertainment facilities and top-notch utilities. In order to meet the demands of this sophisticated structure, advanced networked audio management with cutting-edge technology is crucial. This requires expertise in managing large-scale audio systems capable of handling a high number of channels and multiple technologies and protocols, particularly for providing immersive audio experiences in their expansive cinema hall.