Sennheiser Spectera Deployed on Ed Sheerans The Loop Global Stadium Tour

Ed Sheeran's The Loop' tour launched in Auckland in January 2026 before moving on to Australia, with South America and the United States to follow later in the year. Monitor engineer and RF tech Dave White, who has worked with Sheeran since 2014, deployed Sennheiser's Spectera system for the tour - his first time using the product in a live stadium environment.

White has used Sennheiser equipment across multiple Sheeran tours, moving from the 2000 Series to Digital 9000, then Digital 6000 for the Mathematics' tour. The switch to Spectera came at the start of 2026.

We've gone through quite a few generations of Sennheiser products over the last 12 years, says Dave White, Monitor Engineer and RF Tech. We always keep updated to get the best sound quality we can and work with new equipment as and when it's appropriate.

Stage Coverage

The Loop tour features a main stage and a B stage connected by a large walkway. White says managing that coverage with standard analogue IEMs would have required extensive switching and amplification.

We are covering such a large area; Ed is on the main stage and then seamlessly transitions through to a B stage. If we were managing that with standard analogue IEMs, it would be quite a complicated system with lots of switching and over-gaining amplifiers to get even coverage. It can be done, but with Spectera, everything is off-the-shelf and designed for the job, White says. I'm pretty sure that giving a pre-pre-release product to a major artist doing a tour could have been nerve-racking for the Sennheiser team, but I knew it would be fine.

The tour uses 11 antennas across Stage Left, Stage Right, and the B stage, plus a set upstage to cover a 50-by-18-meter LED video wall.

Pretty much every port is used on every Spectera unit, but it does mean we have seamless hand-off and coverage from right the way backstage to halfway down the stadium, White explains.

Audio Quality

White says the transition to Spectera produced an audible difference for the whole crew.

The big difference with Spectera is that even though on paper the dynamic range and volume response should be the same, it's not. You audibly get far more depth of dynamic range. Ed seems happy with the technology and, in terms of how it works for the show moving forward, the transition was pretty seamless. The techs are happy, too, and said, we can actually hear things now'. There's definitely a depth and a clarity we didn't have before, White says.

FOH engineer Simon Kemp reports similar results.

Moving from 6000 to Spectera has been a real sonic improvement. The sound of Ed's guitars has become even more transparent, and the dynamic range has really helped him move from very quiet, gentle songs to loud, in-your-face moments, says Simon Kemp, FOH Engineer. Ed uses his guitar for percussion and kick drum-like beats, and the pack has been great at handling that while staying very transparent-sounding. Ed's show is unique and has specific requirements from a wireless system, one of them being reliability even in the most challenging outdoor conditions. We've had no issues so far. We've had shows where we've emptied water out of his guitar and microphone and still had no problems.

Kemp is also using the Sennheiser MM 445 capsule for Sheeran's vocal. The show has no playback or auto-tune; it's very much a singer-songwriter on his own in a huge stadium. There's no hiding behind anything, so I've been very impressed with the clarity the mic delivers, combined with the signal chain being fully digital from the transmitter right through to the speakers.

RF in Challenging Conditions

The tour opened in Auckland during heavy rain, which White says tested the system from the outset.

We started this tour in Auckland and the only way I can describe it is the rain was biblical; it just didn't stop. It's the first time I've seen Ed perform in a raincoat. We didn't have any failures at all with any of the handhelds or the bodypacks. We had five guitars die just due to water ingress, which seemed fair enough, but we didn't have any RF problems. You don't really get much of a harsher environment than out here in Australia. One minute it's 40-45 degree heat, the next minute it's torrential rain, White says.

Workflow and Setup Time

White notes that Spectera's wideband architecture significantly reduces RF coordination time.

If you have 30 channels, for example, with a standard narrowband system, you would have to calculate and tune each one individually. With Spectera, you select a center frequency, and it does all of them for you. You don't need to worry about intermodulation, or about trying to pack in 30 channels - you just say, this 6 or 8 MHz block, this is me, White explains. We currently run three Spectera Base Stations over three RF carriers for the show, one of which is a complete backup. I just need to find three 6 or 8 MHz holes in the frequency spectrum. Previously that would have taken me half an hour to coordinate, but now I'm probably down to seven minutes, even if I go slowly.

The system has also reduced the physical footprint of White's RF rig. On the last tour, our RF rack for all of the in-ears, the combiners and the amplifiers, was a 32U rack. I've completely got rid of that rack and put three Spectera units, with all the chargers, within our existing monitoring equipment. It's cut down on freight costs and it's much more streamlined.

Beoga Integration

White also deployed Spectera for Beoga, the Irish folk band who perform as part of the tour, using the system's transceiver capability to handle both instrument audio and IEM returns from a single bodypack per musician.

Most musicians have at least one instrument output an

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