Brit Row delivers live sound for the BRIT Awards
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The BRIT Awards returned to London’s O2 Arena complete with performances by Adele, Ed Sheeran, Bring Me The Horizon, Little Simz, Liam Gallagher, Sam Fender, Dave, Anne-Marie, KSI, and Rising Star Award recipient, Holly Humberstone.
Britannia Row’s relationship with the event continues to go from strength to strength, with the company’s Josh Lloyd resuming his role as system designer and FOH mixer. Lloyd created a PA system design that would allow the music to blend effortlessly into the stage design by avoiding key sightlines, while giving clean and clear feeds to the experienced broadcast team.
“The design changed in the weeks leading up to the event due to the stage and seating being reconfigured in the venue, which in turn meant that I had to move the system out so as not to cover the stage runways,” notes Lloyd.
Alongside the main L-Acoustics K1 hangs, Lloyd chose K2 for the side-hangs due to “their ability to control the directivity horizontally.”
L-Acoustics SB18 and KARA II were used for rear hangs, while four K2 delay hangs were placed throughout the venue, with boxes of A15s used as flown in-fills. Cabinets of KS28 were deployed as flown centre and ground subs with A10s for in-fill. The system was powered by L-Acoustics LA12X amplifiers.
Lloyd continues: “The system was modified and optimised for the best possible results, achieving consistently even coverage in the room with a design that was sympathetic to the large video screens and the full visual aesthetic of the show.”
Despite the complexity of the task before them, Lloyd confirms that the Brit Row team were more than happy with this year’s design.
“We’ve had such positive feedback on the system from everyone, despite it always being a real challenge to execute a large format concert for a TV show,” he says. “I’m surprised each year that we manage to find ways to improve what we can offer to the BRITs audience!”
Lloyd also maintained his role at FOH, mixing incoming performers on a DiGiCo Quantum 7. DiGiCo were the only desks used throughout the entire event, a decision Lloyd explains came down to flexibility.
Engineer Chris Coxhead ran a pair of redundant DiGiCo SD12 consoles to mix the variety of presenters, while Jon Lewis and Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Seargent had two DiGiCo Quantum 7 consoles for on-stage monitoring. Brit Row’s Gavin Tempany also used a DiGiCo SD12 for his orchestra submix during Ed Sheeran’s second performance.
Once again, Brit Row gave student placements to budding sound professionals from the BRIT School, a leading performing arts and technology education centre.
Successful applicants Rhys Barratt and Hannah Woosnam-Savage, were welcomed into the Brit Row camp as part of this year’s programme and, working alongside Brit Row’s crew, were able to see first-hand what it takes to provide audio to a show of this scale.
Woosnam-Savage comments: “It was an amazing learning experience and taught me so much about largescale, live productions.”
Coordinating the radio systems for the BRITS was head of RF, Lucy MacKinnon, who specified 26 ways of Sennhieser 6000, 12 ways of Shure Axient Digital, 34 Sennheiser 2000, and four Shure PSM1000 IEMs.
“The BRITs is a huge milestone in my live sound career, more specifically as an RF engineer, as I came up through Britannia Row Training myself,” says MacKinnon. “It was incredibly important for me that every engineer who came in with the various performing artists went into the show confident in the RF that was provided for them.”
