Having been part of the audio team for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee last year, Milton was delighted to once again be part of such a historical occasion.
We were fortunate to have the same tried and trusted creative team for this event, he says. The continuity was invaluable and gave us a well - established methodology for this complex production, says Milton. Under the direction of Julia Knowles and with Mark Sidaway as the Executive Producer for the BBC, Nigel Catmur as LD and Set design by Stufish, I had the privilege of reprising my role as Sound Designer. Returning for a second time was an incredible experience, one which I owe to the close collaboration with Kev Duff and Andy Deacon from Zen Broadcast Ltd. The three of us approached the project with a cohesive audio strategy, creating a harmonious blend for the entire show. With the concert being both live and televised, our aim was to make it sound good for television viewers, as well as sounding magnificent at the venue.
The circular stage featured two iconic motifs that highlighted the event's significance, with elements forming the Union Jack, and a halo-like screen suspended on four upright pillars, enveloping the roof and symbolising the Crown.
I had a lengthy collaboration process with the immensely talented Zarya Vrabcheva Set Designer from Stufish, and Nigel [Catmur] LD to shape the stage design, striving to make it beautiful, continues Milton. The backdrop of Windsor Castle made it all the more important to make it look and sound as special as we could.
Milton worked with Vrabcheva to conceal the main PA, seamlessly integrating the system within the pillars, which were clad in reflective mirrors, making it virtually invisible. This attention to detail created a masterful illusion, ensuring pristine audio while preserving the stage's visual integrity.
The final stage design guaranteed that the audience would hear everything they needed without any difficulty in discerning the performers and presenters speaking from its farther reaches. It aimed to minimise sound spillage and colouration, ensuring the audience experienced synchronised audio across all aspects, he explains.
Milton further notes that the BBC's provision of an extensive pre-production period ensured the design aligned with the budget and catered to all performances, from Lionel Richie and Andrea Bocelli to Take That, as well as the presenters and various speakers, including HRH The Prince of Wales.
From a technological standpoint, with 400 inputs and several hundred outputs, the consoles had to be DiGiCo Quantum 7s, Milton says also recalling how Take That's special rendition of Never Forget, performed alongside the choristers of St George's Chapel and hundreds of other singers and dancers, gave the show an uplifting finale. At that point, we had 400 performers on stage including Take That, the choir, military drummers, and all other singers and dancers on the parapets - it was the absolute maximum we could have. To achieve that level of complexity was undoubtedly a technological feat, expertly managed with the Quantum 7 consoles, Milton adds.
Being asked to supply all aspects of audio and RF was going to bring some unique challenges and opportunities, adds Terry Tew. Having worked closely with Zen Broadcast and Ben Milton for many years gave all parties the confidence that we were in each other's capable hands. The consoles and racks were connected via 4.7km of Neutrik Opticon fibre. The Quantum 7s were invaluable and a genuine necessity, ensuring we could cater for the ever-evolving spectacle that we wanted to deliver.
Two Quantum 7s and five SD-Racks on an optical loop were dedicated to monitoring. One Quantum 7, manned by Toby Chester, handled the two 40-piece choirs, orchestra and the house band, while also sending sub-mixed orchestral stems to Seamus Fenton on the second Quantum 7, which was dedicated to the artists. A third Quantum 7 was in place as a backup.
The orchestra was on one ring of Aviom mixers, the band were on another ring and the choirs were on IEM mixes. I took the band and several sub-mixes of the orchestra and choirs from Toby - a whopping 300-plus channels and I gave him all the artist vocals, backing vocals and the Steinway, explains Fenton. I sub-mixed the Steinway down to one stereo stem with reverb and had 15 in-ear monitor mixes, spread across the artists, as well as several mixes of floor monitors positioned all over the stage and up on the castle garden ramparts.
With tight change overs between artists and little time to do line checks, Fenton made good use of the Quantum 7's Snapshot feature. I always try to have a reverb per artist for the entire show, but this show was too big to achieve that, so I had to Snapshot. I had a Snapshot for everything to allow me to share reverbs and make sure I could send Toby the right vocals so he could distribute them across all the musicians, Fenton notes. It required a lot of housekeeping, so we set up a talkback buss on the consoles so Toby and I could talk to each other in our ears, and make sure that what we were doing was aligned.
Fenton is also a big fan of the Mustard Compressors, particularly the optical compressor. It's like an audio iron and just takes the wrinkles out of things, he smiles. The All Pass Filter also came into its own.
I got a presenter mix from Chris at FOH, which is quite normal on televised shows. With the All Pass Filter engaged on the presenter mix from Chris there could safely be one fader to rule them all', so when a presenter came on stage, that channel came up everywhere as the presenter channel was routed to the matrix that was going to the on stage speakers. That allowed Chris to simply fade things up into the PA and on the stage, irrespective of what I was doing. Things li
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang today visited the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to commission an NVIDIA DGX GB300 system - bringing one...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
22/07/2026
RT REPORTS NET SURPLUS OF 22.5 MILLION IN 2025...
22/07/2026
In the Opinion of the Censor airs Monday 27 July at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player
In the Opinion of the Censor looks at how films for theatrical release wer...
22/07/2026
Before a healthcare robot can be useful in the real world, it has to learn how the physical world pushes back. Anatomy varies. Instruments bend, press, slip and...
Having been part of the audio team for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee last year, Milton was delighted to once again be part of such a historical occasion.
