A Trip to Tomorrowland

If you're into electronic music, the Tomorrowland festival is the place to be. During the last weekend in July, artists perform on 16 stages in Boom, Belgium, 32 kilometers north of Brussels. Starting in 2005 as a small one-day event, it has grown over the years to three days, multiple stages and international connections.

The second night of the event, known as Tomorrowland UNITE, involves a live video connection between Tomorrowland (Belgium) and cities in Mexico, India, Japan, Colombia, Germany, South Africa, and Israel.

Busy somewhere backstage, we meet up with Tom Callebaut, a subcontractor who manages the live audio webstream for the 3-day event, as well as setting up the global intercom connections for the UNITE portion. It's all done with Telos gear.

UNITE involves large video screens and bi-directional feeds at all the locations. “The setup enables the video and audio from any site to go live to the others,” adds Callebaut. The signals are delivered by satellite uplinks and downlinks at each site. Another important part of the installation is the intercom connection between the 8 sites, as coordination of events is critical.

“This setup cries out for an IP solution,” notes Callebaut, who is doing Tomorrowland for the first time. “And the only brand that I wanted to use was Telos.” Seven Telos Z/IP ONEs were packed in flight cases along with a VPN router, and shipped to the remote sites. Callebaut refers to these as 'zipcases'. The other seven Z/IP ONEs were located at the command center in Boom. “I can see and control all the routers and Z/IP ONEs with the VPN using my laptop, no matter where I am,” adds Callebaut.

In addition to providing the intercom feed between sites, the Z/IP ONEs were also used as a backup. “We used the left channel for intercom, and right channel as a standby audio feed for the UNITE audio,” adds Callebaut. “The main audio feed travels with the video over satellites to ensure that pictures and sound remain in sync.”

“I can see and control all the routers and Z/IP ONEs with the VPN using my laptop, no matter where I am."

—Tom Callebaut on the Telos Z/IP ONE

Callebaut's other task at Tomorrowland was setting up the audio feed to the webstream, so the event could be available to a global audience. For that, he used the Telos Z/IPStream R/1. “Listeners were amazed by the quality of the audio, even at lower bitstreams.”

Callebaut is busy the rest of the year with his broadcast consulting business, radiostudio.be. “I build a lot of radio studios, and I like to deliver solutions that involve thinking out of the box. For example, I recently built a directional wi-fi link to deliver Livewire+.” Among his clients are: Radio Nostalgie, City-Music, ClubFM, TV Limburg, and ATV.

He also rents out mobile packages to stations who want to do remote broadcasts. The gear is packed in two flight cases, along with a desk. The package includes: an Axia iQ AoIP mixer, six Telos phone hybrids, mic processors, an Omnia.11, and three monitors. To get audio back to the station, there are IP and ISDN codecs as well as a KA-SAT satellite uplink.

Rental of broadcast gear is also part of Callebaut's business. The inventory includes the Telos Z/IP ONE and Z/IPStream, Axia iQ consoles and xNodes, Omnia.11, Neumann TLM-103 cardioid mic, along with other broadcast equipment, as well as temporary wi-fi access points and temporary VoIP communications systems. High and low power transmitters are also available.

Callebaut concludes, “This was my first Tomorowland, but it probably won't be my last. The client was extremely impressed with the performance of the Z/IP ONEs. Their latency was lower than that of cell phone connections, and they worked perfectly. If they do the same type of setup next year, I'll be back.”

For more about the Z/IP ONE, don't miss this story too:

The JOY FM: Z/IP ONE Power User

Telos Alliance has led the audio industry’s innovation in Broadcast Audio, Digital Mixing & Mastering, Audio Processors & Compression, Broadcast Mixing Consoles, Audio Interfaces, AoIP & VoIP for over three decades. The Telos Alliance family of products include Telos® Systems, Omnia® Audio, Axia® Audio, Linear Acoustic®, 25-Seven® Systems, Minnetonka™ Audio and Jünger Audio. Covering all ranges of Audio Applications for Radio & Television from Telos Infinity IP Intercom Systems, Jünger Audio AIXpressor Audio Processor, Omnia 11 Radio Processors, Axia Networked Quasar Broadcast Mixing Consoles and Linear Acoustic AMS Audio Quality Loudness Monitoring and 25-Seven TVC-15 Watermark Analyzer & Monitor. Telos Alliance offers audio solutions for any and every Radio, Television, Live Events, Podcast & Live Streaming Studio With Telos Alliance “Broadcast Without Limits.”