On the tour, Patchwork found the sound quality of the Axient Digital system to be faultless
UK - Japanese-born singer-songwriter, model, and actress Rina Sawayama, released her debut album during lockdown on the Dirty Hit Label to favourable reviews, from ‘strongest album of the year’ (Elton John) to ‘something truly beautiful’ (NPR).
In support of the album, Patchwork London was selected by Rina’s management / record label to record live video shoots during the lockdown period, providing monitoring and multi-track recording, which led to Patchwork being asked to support the UK tour, followed by her biggest show to date at Roundhouse and ultimately the NME Awards 2022 show.
With lots of energetic choreography and dancing, on her first large scale tour, a premium wireless microphone system was a necessity. Patchwork London’s touring director and Rina’s production manager / FOH engineer, Calum Mordue selected the Shure Axient Digital Wireless System and AD2 microphones with the Shure PSM1000s In-Ear Monitoring System.
Aside from the video wall, the set including riser platform, staircase, lighting, and sound was used throughout the tour, to ensure each audience received the same experience. Freedom on stage was important and Axient Digital Wireless System allowed this, with the faith that there would be no signal degradation.
On the tour, Patchwork found the sound quality of the Axient Digital system to be faultless, with extremely low latency. Calum was keen to keep the show as digital as possible and was particularly impressed with the RF and sound quality, whilst keeping the full signal chain digital from the AES outputs from the wireless transmitter into the desk, digital processing by the desk and then out to the amplifier rack without multiple conversions.
Calum adds: “The NME show had particular RF challenges with five acts playing the award show with huge numbers of channels of RF, using Shure’s Axient Digital meant we could licence in a broad range of wireless spectrum which was really useful.
“The Wireless Workbench integration is fantastic, the speed at which we could change and deploy frequencies to units was astounding, and the 4 channels receiver in one rack is such a winner – I don’t know any other manufacturer where you can get four channels in one 19” rack.” concludes Calum.
Calum was keen to praise the support from Shure, adding that “Working with Jack Drury from the market development team at Shure is fantastic. On another project, last minute we were asked for a Chrome AD2 Microphone which resulted in him personally hand delivering it within two hours – I was very impressed.”

Latest Issue. . .