James Blunt’s concert at the Elbphilharmonie went ahead in bizarre fashion as he performed in front of abandoned seats in Hamburg.
The concert, part of the Telekom Street Gig series, was heavily affected by the spread of COVID-19 and instead, the performance was streamed live to the public.
With Telekom already commissioning Peter Brandt and his team of Remote Recording Network to mix and record the James Blunt concert, the changes meant only minor adjustments to the production.
The company, which has been handling sound for the Telekom Street Gigs since 2007, operated from Brandt’s remote mix room in Cologne, 400km away from Hamburg. DirectOut was implemented for on-site conversion of the audio signals and transport between the locations.
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Brandt said: “Remote Recording Network is one of the leading European production companies for high-end recording, transmission and processing of sophisticated sound. The compact, fail-safe and powerful devices from DirectOut are an essential part of the scalable and flexible Remote Mixing setups. Controlling and managing the DirectOut equipment via the globcon tool makes handling even easier.”
All analogue audio signals coming from Blunt and his band were fed into two DirectOut PRODIGY.MC units as Mic-Preamps directly on stage and converted into a MADI stream. The MADI stream, with 64 channels, audio routed to a van from Remote Recording Network, placed in front of the Elbphilharmonie and serving as a hub.
Within the van, the team recorded all audio signals and forwarded the mix to the Remote Mix Room Studio Boecker in Cologne, using public internet connections. An additional DirectOut MADI.BRIDGE took care of signal routing. One EXBOX.MD unit handled the conversion between Dante and MADI (64 channels), while DirectOut’s proprietary EARS feature (Enhanced Automatic Redundancy Switching) ensures uninterrupted playback of the MADI output.
You can watch the full concert here.