At first glance, it might have appeared to be a fairly straightforward job, particularly for a team as experienced as the staff at Bristol-based event production services specialists Enlightened.
After all, they were already familiar with the Seat Unique Stadium, home of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club, following the design and deployment of a sound system for a spectacular drone show at the UK venue six months earlier.
Same brief, right? Powerful, full-range sound, and consistent coverage of the crowd without obscuring their view of the action. But T20 Cricket takes place on the ground, not in the air. And as Enlightened hire and production account manager Ryan Stromski was soon to find out, an uninterrupted sightline from every seat was just the first challenge in what would prove to be a surprisingly complex project.
“The speakers couldn’t be much higher than the advertising hoardings around the pitch, but this didn’t present too much of a problem” says Ryan. “We knew immediately that stacks of 3 each of our NEXO super-compact GEO M6 line array boxes on a single NEXO MSUB15 around the perimeter would give us the low profile and coverage required and, just as importantly, the combination of detailed speech intelligibility and high-impact, crowd-energising sound required for T20 cricket.
“What we learnt quickly was that the planning and deployment of the system infrastructure would present the greatest challenge, particularly given the sometimes – competing requirements of the system performance criteria and the conditions stipulated by venue managers, players and even grounds staff.”
The Enlightened team is contracted to deploy the system at a number of matches throughout the 2026 season, with a minimal set-up time and a requirement for dependable and repeatable performance for operators including the match commentators and a pre- and post-match DJ. So, the decision was taken to leave the system infrastructure permanently in place and bring in the amp racks and speakers on a match-by-match basis.
“The ring of ten speaker stacks is located immediately outside the pitch boundary, with a Dante network of NEXO NXAMP Powered TD Controllers in five locations around the ground” reports Ryan, returning to the story.
“Obviously we had to run the network cabling around the field of play, and this extended the cable run beyond Audinate’s recommended 100-metre limit. Ordinarily we would add switches but that wasn’t possible in this case, as the players from the fielding team often slide over the boundary when trying to stop the ball, and could easily trip over or break any additional network hardware.
“In the event, it was a pleasant surprise to learn that the network operated faultlessly with no dropouts over a maximum cable run of approximately 140 metres.”
In all, the NL4 cabling for the project extends to some 2.5 km and, with only a short time available to re-rig the system on the day before a match, once again, preparation is everything.
“Every speaker including the 18 NEXO ID24s and 6 NEXO P12s used to in fill other areas of the stadium have a unique ID, which is also colour coded by zone. We can usually re-deploy in a about 2 hours, taking care to follow the grounds staff’s instruction never to step on the pitch.”
The team at Enlightened are highly experienced in using NS-1 to configure systems and predict their performance but, for this project, NEXO’s intuitive drag-and-drop software app took a back seat.
“This job is all about what’s practical, not necessarily what’s optimal” says Ryan in conclusion. “That said, our NEXO systems performed brilliantly as ever on this job, really helping to enhance the match day experience for cricket fans.”
