An early adopter in the transition to Dante, Firehouse Productions is presently supporting Jack White and Nine Inch Nails on tour using AoIP systems based on Focusrite RedNet components.

Jack White and band hit the road in April in Detroit, supporting his new Boarding House Reach album. The tour covers the US and Europe, and the audio control system assembled by Firehouse Production uses an array of RedNet units that will allow White’s audio crew to record up to 72 channels of audio every night for archiving, as well as allowing those same recordings to be used for virtual soundchecks through the tour’s analogue FOH console. Four RedNet A16R 16-channel analogue I/O interfaces take signal from the stage to a pair of Mac Minis using two RedNet PCIeR Cards as interfaces.

‘Jack wanted an all-analogue rig, and the AoIP system we built for this tour lets the audio stay analogue right up to the console,’ explains Firehouse Productions Director of Touring, Chris Russo. ‘At the same time, the band has all the benefits of being able to record every show digitally, ready for archiving, remixing or for virtual soundchecks.’

After a few dates in Las Vegas and Europe over the summer, Nine Inch Nails’ 26-date Cold and Black and Infinite North America tour will begin in September in Atlanta. On the tour, which will have several of its shows broadcast and streamed live, front of house will also supply 32 channels of stem mixes, sent as Madi to a RedNet D64R 64-channel Madi bridge, which converts those stem signals to Dante for network transport. Then, the Dante signal is sent over fibre to a pair of RedNet A16R 16-channel analogue I/O interfaces that are loaded in the stage rack and that will feed the converted stem signals to the remote truck for broadcast.

‘The show has over 90 channels of audio on stage, so sending pre-mixed stems to the broadcast mixer makes that job easier and assures that the mix that goes out over the broadcast and live stream is the same mix fans are hearing in the venue,’ says Russo. ‘The RedNet products have been reliable, which lets us build a simple, flexible, and straightforward routing system for this audio. RedNet’s reliability makes all the difference in a live situation.’

Firehouse Productions built its first RedNet AoIP system for the 2017 Indian Film Academy Awards ceremonies, which took place at the New Jersey/New York MetLife Stadium, and where 18 RedNet devices were deployed in a complex audio network. Since then, Firehouse Productions has also deployed two portable AoIP systems using RedNet products.