The sold-out arena run demanded a flexible, globally compatible RF setup – and the team built one entirely around Sound Devices Astral.
Lorde’s Ultrasound World Tour is no small undertaking. Launched in late 2025 to support her latest album Virgin, the run takes place in arenas across North America, Europe and Oceania – some of the biggest rooms the New Zealand artist has played to date. With that scale comes serious RF complexity, and her audio team responded by building an end-to-end wireless setup around Sound Devices Astral, covering front of house, monitoring and backstage communications.
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The system was put together by a tight crew: Monitor Engineer Kevin Glendinning, RF Engineer Stacey Handley, FOH Engineer Philip Harvey, and Systems Engineer Chris Demonbreun. Planning began during rehearsals in May last year, and the team stress-tested Astral at Lorde’s Glastonbury set before committing fully. “We tested Sound Devices Astral at her Glastonbury set and were immediately impressed with the fact that we could get the sound of a wired mic out of a wireless system,” Glendinning says.
For Lorde’s vocals, Handley runs the ARX32 Wireless Receiver with the Astral HH microphone, keeping her frequencies in the first tuning band to get the most out of the quad diversity. Talkbacks and other auxiliary signals sit in tuning band 3, so they can be adjusted independently each day. SpectraBand’s 169–1525 MHz range covers the lot, so no equipment changes are needed as the tour moves between markets.
There’s a section of the show where Lorde switches to a cabled mic with the same capsule. Both she and Glendinning prefer the wireless. “The clarity, high frequency detail and overall detail sound signature of the Astral HH beat out the cable mic that we all reference as the basis of true, direct vocal input – something I have never, nor heard anyone, ever say when A-Bing RF to hardwired inputs.”
Astral TX bodypacks take care of crew and band talkback via DPA lavs, while Demonbreun relies on an ARX8 and TX transmitters for system measurement. Taking up to 50-plus readings in stadiums, he points to the flat frequency and phase response, battery life and remote transmitter control as the highlights.
Lorde’s Astral HH was also customised for the run, fitted with a nickel-plated shell from Rebel and a control ring switch to suit her preferences on stage. Small details, but on a tour of this size, the details matter. “Typically, on a show of this size, you have a laundry list of worries when the lights go down,” Glendinning says. “With Astral, we don’t have to worry about the RF side of things anymore.”
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