Ville Kauhanen Selects DirectOut

DirectOut has been chosen by system designer and engineer, Ville Kauhanen to provide fail-safe stability for all his complex stadium-touring audio system designs.

Stadium touring is the pinnacle of live music touring and Kauhanen is at the very top of his game. He has worked non-stop in the industry for nearly 30 years and with some of the highest profile artists on the planet. His recent work includes Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour, which concluded in December 2024. The tour visited 54 cities across five continents playing 149 shows and was the highest grossing tour of all time.

Kauhanen was the system engineer for the tour and provided the system infrastructure for each location. His method of working today is very different to when he first started, but, as he explains, his huge industry overview enables him to plan for the future, as well as succeed in the present.

"I'm old enough to have seen the transition from analog to digital. When I started, we had very different ideas of what the future of audio networking would look like,” he says. “We assumed there would just be one huge network with everything in it, but we now know that this may never happen. That's why I need a strong audio backbone, and that can only be provided by DirectOut. I rely upon the PRODIGY range, usually together with EXBOX, for every project I'm involved in."

DirectOut offers reliable conversion and matrixing between a wide range of audio network protocols so, regardless of the manufacturer’s network strategy, signal paths between pieces of equipment stay intact. Across the industry, different protocols such as MADI, Ravenna, Dante and AVB are in use and successfully matrixing these elements requires powerful conversion that can operate seamlessly.

"I don't care what the speaker or console brand is, but the audio transportation infrastructure has to be DirectOut-based," he said. "They support so many formats, and their products are flexible and reliable. Due to their popularity and ability to support most audio formats used in productions, I often find that the different vendors for each department can provide PRODIGYs as part of their package and then I can patch things together as one infrastructure backbone."

The power of solutions like PRODIGY.MP comes from the FPGA-based low-latency processing. Kauhanen relies on this to maintain a stable signal path across different clocking rates and network protocols, ensuring failsafe operation at every point, even in 90,000-capacity venues.

Planning infrastructure on a stadium scale is a massive challenge. Kauhanen needs to get sound from the performer to the audience, but there are many other considerations. Timecode must be shared across departments - there are feeds for social media, broadcast and accessibility, such as correctly timed headphone feeds for sign language interpreters. This data will all travel on a network designed by Kauhanen, so it is essential that the infrastructure parameters are known in advance. For the fine details of the network, he uses an associate who manages details like network switches. Such is the requirement for a complex understanding of IT and audio technology, the use of his associate is written into his contract.

"One of the most important parts of my job is planning. I need to get that done early, so the information can be sent to the venues. Because of the impact on seating layout, our loudspeaker, amplifier, console and infrastructure layout all needs to be confirmed before the venues can sell tickets. This is done very far in advance," he explained. "Once the infrastructure information is in place, we can add anything else we need to; extra audio-feeds or points of connectivity, right up to when the first show starts. We use time-critical NDI video across our network, too, so there are time sensitive issues that need to be understood."

DirectOut is Kauhanen's solution today, but he knows it is flexible enough to be ready for the future. Another part of his regular working is delivering seminars where he shares his knowledge with the next generation of system designers. In several public seminars Kauhanen explains how PRODIGYs can be connected to create a single backbone that supports any audio network.

"I have more experience than most, so I try to share. I also try to ensure that I’m not the smartest person in the room, so I can keep learning best practice. Nothing is ever a secret!" Kauhanen concluded. "Looking to the future, DirectOut solutions already support such a wide range of audio formats, that I will just keep using them until the end of the world!"

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