The recent 2021 Brit Awards Show, held at London’s 02 Arena, was supported by a complex audio approach designed, provided and operated by Britannia Row Productions (BRP) that utilized Outline Newton digital processing to handle several mission-critical tasks at the core of the sound reinforcement systems deployed for the event.
The 2021 version of the show was particularly notable as the UK’s first major indoor live music event in more than a year. The event was staged with a limited live audience as part of a test by the UK government to trial the idea of crowds with no social distancing, along with the FA Cup Final and World Snooker Championship final as events that would feature larger crowds than allowed by law at the time.
The BRP team included system techs Laurie Fradley and Adam Smith, system engineer Sergiy Zhytnikov, and system designer/front of house engineer Josh Lloyd-Fradley. They employed Newton for matrix mixing from the front of house consoles into the PA, utilizing the processor’s optical MADI, AES and analog inputs to provide a main and redundant path from both the band console and presenter board. Further, the 18 x 16 matrix supplied additional inputs for playback, system tuning and alignment, with the unit simultaneously outputting back-up mixes for broadcast and additional effects used in the room.
This year the main system had a distributed ring configuration that covered the audience in level 1 of the bowl and the boxes, with a separate left-right system to serve the nominees on the floor. Due to the location of the presenter stage — perpendicular to the end-on performance stage — an additional speech system was flown above it to provide directionality for the nominees on the floor. Newton played a key role in simplifying the matrixing to these numerous elements.
In addition, Newton’s Dante output supplemented the existing Dante drive infrastructure, which was transmitted over fiber to the distribution at the roof level of the arena. Here, signal was converted to AES and input to the amplifiers, the majority of which were flown above the PA elements. Back-up was provided using Newton’s optical MADI output, also transmitted to the roof over fiber where it was converted to analog and distributed to the amplifiers.
The Newton’s ability to patch to the Madi output stream made it possible to provide each PA element with its own discrete back-up. This eliminated the need to split the analogue signal and also allowed us the function of soft-patching the back-up from FOH should a change be required.”
A television audience of 2.9 million watched live performances from acts that included Coldplay, Years & Years with Sir Elton John, Rag’n’Bone Man, Pink and Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir, with awards presented to Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, Little Mix and Harry Styles, among others.
