Page 48 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

“Because of COVID we needed to be swift in our response to ensure things like The Gold Medal
could occur and, very importantly, that in-person classes could still take place with full-scale
participation,” explains Julian Hepple, Head of Recording and Audio Visual at Guildhall School. “To
make that happen we quickly turned to Dante and Dante Domain Manager. And, in September, as we
returned to in-person teaching, we were able to hold The Gold Medal and broadcast the performance
online.”

To adhere to social distancing requirements, The Gold Medal performances were constructed across
four separate rooms. The largest space was populated by those on string instruments and the piano,
with each participant located two meters apart. Woodwind and brass instruments were split up each
into their own rooms, with three meters of space allocated between performers. Finally, the conductor
was located in a fourth room. The challenge of this setup, of course, was collaboration between the
multiple rooms.

Photo credit: Clive Totman

“We had 90 musicians in total across the different rooms and building,” Hepple says. “We needed to
manage a number of inputs and outputs across the space and have them be as latency free as possible.
They needed to be able to perform synchronously with one another.”

To do this, 40 Neumann, Rupert Neve Designs, Schoeps, and DBA directional microphones were
strategically placed across the space to capture instrument audio. These feeds are brought into SSL,
Yamaha and Neutrik preamplifiers where they’re translated into Dante-native channels. These Dante
feeds then head to Cisco and Dell switch infrastructure across two buildings, and then routed to a
Solid State Logic System T mixer that allows for broadcast specific processing. The audio feeds are
then delivered out to two locations: to the broadcast mix for live playout via a live production system,
and to the other performers via headphones.

“With Dante we were able to deliver the correct mix to the different rooms with an imperceptible
level of latency,” Hepple states. “Our conductor went into rehearsals on day one, and within 20 bars
he said he was ready to go. This is someone who has decades of experience in the classical
performance space, and it was an immediate acceptance of the new setup.”