Los Angeles, CA (May 1, 2026)—Lorde is deep in the middle of her Ultrasound World tour, playing the 20,000-seat Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City tonight. When she hits the stage, she’ll have her Sound Devices Astral HH wireless mic in hand, sending signal to the matching ARX32 Wireless Receiver at stageside—but that’s hardly the production’s only RF gear.
To keep the tour’s RF setup running, no matter where in the world the production travels, monitor engineer Kevin Glendinning and tour production manager Robin Scott developed an RF plan with input from RF engineer Stacey Handley, front of house engineer Philip Harvey and systems engineer Chris Demonbreun.
“We knew that we had to go beyond what would be considered a ‘standard’ deployment to provide ourselves with the most flexible RF toolbox,” Glendinning explains. “We had to prepare for large and diversely-configured venues, a very active and mobile on-stage performer in Ella [Lorde], and the ability to deal with a larger-than-normal amount of signal congestion, all while providing pristine audio quality with the least amount of latency.”
The Astral system was chosen after they put it to the test in a not-so-low-profile setting: Lorde’s set last year at Glastonbury. RF engineer Stacey Handley then built the tour’s system around Sound Devices Astral and its SpectraBand technology.
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“Looking at the size and scope of the venues and the fact that our initial run took us through some of the most heavily RF congested areas of the United States, my top priority was having maximum control, flexibility and signal quality within the available frequencies,” she says. “With Astral, this is easily achievable. SpectraBand’s tuning range of 169-1525 MHz gives us ample frequency room to work within, and because it works globally, we can take advantage of this as the tour continues to other regions of the world without changing equipment.”
The team customized Lorde’s Astral HH to ensure a comfortable weight and straight-forward control. “I run all of Ella’s frequencies in the first tuning band, making the most of the quad diversity,” Handley says. “I then place all of our auxiliary frequencies, such as talk-backs, in tuning band 3, giving me the flexibility to move them independently from day to day without any difficulty.”
In addition to handling all of the production’s performance needs, Astral Wireless also was utilized for crew communications and testing and measurement for each venue. Astral TX Bodypacks are deployed for talkback amongst the crew and between the band members.
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“We recognized that having it all in one system was a winning strategy once we’d been educated on all of the tools available in the Astral ecosystem,” shares Glendinning. “We’re all on in-ears and we have the Astral TX hooked up to our DPA Lav Mics with a momentary switch so we can easily talk to each other, the band, or Ella without any issue. On a production of this scale, it saves an incredible amount of time and allows us to be anywhere we need to be without having to be tied to the console.”