Wigwam Hire has been a leading supplier of sound systems and equipment for touring and dry hire for over 30 years and Alex Hadjigeorgiou, Technical Specialist at Wigwam Hire, explained how one small box has made a significant difference to the weight and subsequent cost of touring in the last couple of years.
Traditionally when using playback on a tour you were limited to 24 channels of playback. The 24 channels from a Tascam or Fostex fed a relay changeover switcher controlled by the presence or not of tone. More recently it became the Radial SW8 stackable 8 channel auto-switcher.
But over time 24 tracks were not enough for playback and the analogue way of doing things became unworkable simply because of the amount of sync required and the sheer size of the systems.
Moving to MADI based systems meant the track count could be greatly increased while drastically reducing the physical size and weight and improving the ability to respond to changes and emergencies. However, there was no obvious way to switch MADI streams without compromise.
One of Wigwams customers, Des Ward of Audiotech Services, thought of an idea to seamlessly switch from one MADI stream to another. DirectOut was already thinking along the same lines and the EXBOX.BLDS (Buffer Loop Detection System) was born after a short period of intensive code writing at DirectOut and, for speed, delivered in their EXBOX.64 format converter box just in time for The Steps Reunion Tour.
The Lord of the Dance Tour asked us to cut the size and weight of their playback system by half a tonne and the EXBOX.BLDS was the lynchpin that made this possible, allowing us to reduce 24U to 10U. We have two Mac minis with RME cards to produce MADI, a video switch and any MIDI we need to run plus the EXBOX.BLDS. We use QLab, the software application for live show control. With QLab tracks are edited instantly as opposed to the two hours it used to take in the old analogue days.
Since its debut as a fix-it box, DirectOut has developed the EXBOX.BLDS into a fully-fledged product with push buttons and GPIs to manually control playback changeover and LEDs and GPOs to confirm MADI and changeover status. It constantly monitors the BLDS channel on the primary input and when theres a lock-up or output buffer loop, EXBOX.BLDS automatically switches the MADI output to the second input. The changeover is within two samples and no one is any the wiser.
EXBOX.BLDS was part of a huge playback system for Massive Attack v Adam Curtis and its been an essential bit of kit for the Edinburgh Tattoo, One Direction World Tour, JLS tours, Westlife Farewell Tour and many others. In my view EXBOX.BLDS is the Rosetta Stone in the evolution of MADI based playback systems
Alex is pictured with Gary Kenyon on the left, FOH and Head of Sound Lord of the Dance, "The little box which finally got us away from analogue. And in the centre Oliver Twiby, Playback Operator Massive Attack, "Extremely simple and clever little box."
DirectOut Technologies MADI equipment is distributed in the UK by Aspen Media.
www.aspen-madi.com www.aspen-media.com
www.aspen-madi.com/news_details.aspx?ni=5
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
Wigwam Hire has been a leading supplier of sound systems and equipment for touring and dry hire for over 30 years and Alex Hadjigeorgiou, Technical Specialist at Wigwam Hire, explained how one small box has made a significant difference to the weight and subsequent cost of touring in the last couple of years.
