Sennheiser Spectera Underpins Historic Archbishop Installation At Canterbury Cathedral

Canterbury Cathedral marked a landmark in the Church of England's 1,400-year history on 25 March, when Sarah Mullally was installed as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury — the first woman to hold the office. With some 2,000 guests in attendance, including Prince William and the Princess of Wales, dignitaries from the Commonwealth and the United Nations, and a live BBC audience of millions, d&b solutions deployed Sennheiser's Spectera wideband wireless system to ensure faultless audio across the 160-metre-long building.

The production team ran 42 Spectera beltpacks across two Base Stations to maintain robust, clear transmission throughout the service. d&b solutions was an early adopter of Spectera, placing its order when the system premiered at IBC 2024. "Our original appetite came from wanting to invest in a state-of-the-art technology that offers us both rental stock flexibility in an ever crowded RF spectrum, but also a highly versatile product able to operate as both an IEM receiver, mic transmitter, or both," said George Veys, Project Manager at d&b solutions.

Initially planned as a modest livestream, the brief expanded into a full BBC broadcast, increasing the channel count and resilience requirements, and demanding secure feeds direct to the outside broadcast (OB) unit. d&b solutions' longstanding relationship with the Church of England and Lambeth Palace meant the team was engaged from the outset as the scope grew.

"Fairly early on, we identified the high likelihood that significant amounts of the Cathedral floor space would be used during the service, with processions and parts of the ceremony taking place in different areas of the building," explained Dave Scarlett, Head of Audio (Live) at d&b solutions. The Cathedral is, as he puts it, "deceptively big when you first step inside, and then it keeps going and it keeps going", with some antenna cable runs exceeding 100 metres. Instead of a complex RF-over-fibre approach with combiners and heavy cabling, Spectera's DAD antennas were linked over CAT5 and combined with fibre using media converters and PoE, greatly simplifying deployment.

"It was meant to just be a live stream, but then it grew into a broadcast, so we knew we needed to upgrade the RF to Spectera. The Archbishop walks in at one end and is installed at the other, so we needed to pick her up consistently the whole way. There was no other solution," said Mitch Jones, Production Account Manager – Live Events at d&b solutions.

The final RF package comprised two Spectera Base Stations, eight DAD antennas and 42 beltpacks, all in mic mode. Supporting infrastructure included Allen & Heath mixing, Yamaha I/O and conversion, and Netgear switching. In a rare move for a production of this scale, no IEMs were used. For the Archbishop, two beltpacks and two lavalier microphones — one pack per Base Station — provided critical redundancy. All microphone elements were DPA, including discreet headsets for a 16-piece African choir.

The Base Stations' Dante outputs fed the in-venue PA network, while MADI outputs ran directly to the OB truck, giving the BBC a resilient, parallel audio path in addition to the digital split provided by d&b solutions. Spectera's compact footprint also proved decisive: accommodating 42 channels on a narrowband system would have required rack space the Cathedral could not spare.

With international dignitaries and minimal rehearsal time, remote adjustment of pack parameters during the service — especially input gain — was essential. Unlike previous workflows that require a separate control-data antenna network, Spectera carries mobile terminal control in its main RF carrier, removing extra hardware and complexity.

The team integrated Spectera with Sonoros, a UK-developed control and monitoring application, enabling mic engineers El Ashwood, Carys Walker and Ian Reeves to oversee system status and solo individual feeds anywhere on the venue Wi-Fi via laptop or iPad — invaluable when miking 42 people quickly.

This was d&b solutions' largest Spectera deployment so far and its first extensive use of antennas over fibre at this scale. Sennheiser's Kevin Gwyther-Brown and Technical Application Engineer Marcus Blight provided extensive remote support, including access to an unreleased firmware build that delivered extra performance for the fibre infrastructure. Pre-production benefited from the SoundBase Spectera Mode Planning tool, allowing the team to map link modes and validate capacity before shipping.

"The confidence that Dave had in the system gave me the confidence that it was the right solution. When you're covering that amount of beltpacks with limited space, a compact solution just makes sense, and everyone was really happy with what we put out," added Jones.

Load-in commenced the Thursday before the service while the Cathedral remained open to the public. The BBC arrived on Monday, rehearsals followed on Tuesday, and the live broadcast aired on Wednesday without incident. Initially cautious about receivers without XLR outputs, the OB crew left impressed. "After the show, they reflected that it had been a really excellent deployment and they had no reservations," recalls Scarlett. "In an increasingly challenging RF environment, products like Spectera are a really sharp tool to have on the belt."

"We chose Spectera for this project because of its market leading RF performance and, due to the size of the Cathedral, the ability for the product to perform in multiple RF zones seamlessly. This is exactly the kind of project we envisioned Spectera would be perfect for, and it performed brilliantly," Veys concluded.

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