With Covid travel restrictions limiting movement between locations, those wishing to attend the annual Passionate Women’s Conference from overseas – New Zealand’s largest event for Christian women – found their regular March date under threat.

Thinking not just outside the box, but also outside of his own country, sound engineer Rich Bryant, who was also unable to attend in person, mixed the broadcast feed from his studio in Sydney, Australia – a distance of 2,258km, and two time zones, from the venue.

The convention regularly attracts thousands of attendees, plus international guest speakers, to the prestigious Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington for a mixed programme of music, worship and spoken word presentations. ‘Normally I’d travel to Wellington to mix the broadcast, but that was not an option this year due to the quarantine requirements’ Bryant explains. ‘After talking to Andrew Crawford at Australian A&H distributor TAG about the network control capabilities of dLive, plus the minimal requirements for additional equipment and infrastructure, we proceeded down that route.’

With onsite support in Wellington provided by local hire company Lampros Sound, a dLive DM64 MixRack – fitted with a Dante card for interfacing with the onsite A/V network, plus a Waves card for virtual soundcheck and additional output processing – was provided at the venue for Bryant to control remotely from his Sydney studio.

The DM64 was connected to a dLive S7000 control surface in Sydney via a secure VPN connection, managed by Riverbed’s SD-WAN service, using the integrated network ports on both units. Luke Sheaves of Riverbed was on hand to provide IT and network support in Sydney, with Alistair Lambie of Lampros Sound monitoring the connection at the New Zealand end.

Audio and video monitoring of the broadcast feed in Sydney was provided via an SRT stream to Bryant’s iPad, arriving with less than 150ms of latency, ensuring he could react quickly to the performances taking place across the Tasman Sea. Additionally, Bryant used Audiomovers software, fed by the Waves card in the DM64, to monitor the solo/PAFL bus with a manageable latency of 200ms. The Intercom Unity app, running on a second iPad, was used to handle comms between Bryant and the technical team at the venue.

Back at the venue, another DM64 – configured for multi-surface operation – was used to handle both FOH and monitor duties, with a pair of S7000 control surfaces for engineers Andrew Forde (monitors) and Simon Faisandier (FOH). Two DX168 expanders were added to feed performer IEMs and provide additional A/V I/O, with Waves and Dante cards utilised for audio transport and additional processing.

‘What started as an ambitious endeavour ended as a resounding success’ reflects Rich. ‘It was a truly ground-breaking weekend, and we couldn’t have done it without the dLive, and the support provided by TAG, Lampros Sound and Riverbed’.

‘The conference livestream was a total success, with the client and Rich both very happy with the results’ adds TAG Product Specialist Andrew Crawford. ‘It was great to see the dLive platform deliver these results with minimal infrastructure and readily available products. It was a pretty amazing experience to sit here in Sydney and watch Rich mix a conference that I knew was running live in New Zealand, over 2,000km away.’