L-Acoustics’ L-Isa immersive audio technology, deployed with L Series line arrays, played a central role in Andrea Bocelli’s recent UK tour, delivering an intimate sonic experience to arena-scale audiences while slashing setup times.
Bocelli’s production team, supported by Britannia Row Productions, turned to L-Isa Hyperreal Sound to meet the twin challenges of large-scale classical performance: sound clarity across complex orchestration and rapid load-in for a touring schedule. According to front-of-house engineer Davide Lombardi, the L-ISA 7.1 spatial audio configuration was faster to deploy than a traditional stereo setup, something he described as a breakthrough.
The tour featured Bocelli performing with a 60-piece orchestra and 60-voice choir, with around 100 open microphones onstage each night. The L-Isa configuration, which had also used successfully in previous performances in Poland, allowed the engineering team to maintain clarity and spatial detail despite the complexity.
At the final show at London’s O2 Arena, Britannia Row deployed a 7.1 L-Isa system consisting of nearly 100 L-Acoustics loudspeakers powered by 48 amplified controllers. The main Scene System comprised five hangs of L2 and L2D elements, with additional side and rear coverage provided by flown and ground-stacked subwoofers and fills. The cardioid design of the L2 cabinets provided tight pattern control, helping reduce onstage spill and supporting clearer monitoring for performers.
Object-based mixing using the L-Isa Processor enabled precise spatial placement of each element of the performance, with Lombardi working to preserve the natural acoustic relationships between instruments and voices, an essential requirement in classical music.
“My ultimate goal is transparency,” Lombardi said. “"I want audiences to forget they're in a 20,000-seat arena and feel they're in an intimate theatre.”
That artistic ambition aligned with Bocelli’s own focus on detail and audience experience. During rehearsals in Dublin, the singer walked into the audience to hear the L-Isa mix for himself. “He said, ‘I wish I could hear what they're hearing on stage,’” Lombardi recalled.