How do large scale concerts deal with latency?

iaresee

iaresee

Administrator
Moderator
Watching the Eras Tour video with my daughter and the stage they’re on is MASSIVE. Taylor and the whole band move around a ton. They’re all running in-ears and wireless on their guitars. How do the manage latency in these big venue setups? From their transmitter, through their effects and amp, back out to the receiver for their in-ears — that can’t be trivial, can it?

Anyone do live sound support for super mega acts in monster venues? How does it work?
 
Last edited:
Definitely not trivial, but I don't think distance or stage size would be a factor affecting latency, especially when using IEM's.
 
GlennO said:
Definitely not trivial, but I don't think distance or stage size would be a factor affecting latency, especially when using IEM's.
Click to expand...
Why do you figure? The stage here has to be 100+ feet long — that’s not a trivial distance for a round trip signal.
 
Considering that the signal is traveling at nearly the speed of light, it travels that 100 feet pretty quickly :). The devices you mentioned all contribute latency of course, but the latency in that rig, especially when using IEM's, will not be affected by the size of the stage.
 
I imagine Coop will have some good insight for this.

As for Latency, most big productions are going to be using hardcore digital wireless systems which have very low latency and very far range. Also TX/RX would be located most likely under the main stage and being fed from a mid-point insert and not from the main board mix so they won't have the entire FOH final latency to deal with. There is a finite limit of latency that can realistically be dealt with and monitor mix is usually basic in form and just enough to reference certain performance points.
 
iaresee said:
Watching the Eras Tour video with my daughter and the stage their on is MASSIVE. Taylor and the whole band move around a ton. They’re all running in-ears and wireless on their guitars. How do the manage latency in these big venue setups? From their transmitter, through their effects and amp, back out to the receiver for their in-ears — that can’t be trivial, can it?

Anyone do live sound support for super mega acts in monster venues? How does it work?
Click to expand...
The size of the stage makes no difference.
Main obstacles are RF pollution, antenna signal loss. There are dedicated software to deal with the RF issue. And pro rigs use specialized antennae (paddle or helical) which are powered, as well as massive antenna cable. 1/2 inch diameter. That’s what we use and just changing cable from the crap sold with the units to pro cables made a huge difference.
We’re looking into KLANG for monitoring. 1.5 ms latency. Add another 1.5 for the whole Digico system from input to output and you’re at about 3ms. Add the IEM latency of about 2 to 3 ms and the whole system adds up to 5-6ms. Not bad.
You don’t want to go higher for vocals otherwise the “inner” sound of the voice clashes with the IEM.
But stage size is irrelevant. IEM isolation has to be perfect.
 
randocaster said:
At the speed of light a 1000 foot stage would take about 0.000001 seconds.
Click to expand...

GlennO said:
Considering that the signal is traveling at nearly the speed of light, it travels that 100 feet pretty quickly :). The devices you mentioned all contribute latency of course, but the latency in that rig, especially when using IEM's, will not be affected by the size of the stage.
Click to expand...
Fair point :D
 
I’d imagine they just adapt as they are professional touring musicians.

I mean back in the day before IEMs and stuff artist still played huge stages and they didn’t have wedges everywhere so they could walk out to the wings, into the crowd and still play a spot on solo even if they are hearing themselves through monitors some distance away or hearing the stadium speakers echoing et al….

I’m sure the Beatles at Shea Stadium was crap monitoring, know what I mean ?

Obviously less than perfect but they made it work, so I’m sure artist these days can learn to make it work too


Of course, still see tons of dudes complaining about the latency playing in their Madison Square Bedroom lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom