The original set-up for public address paging, and sound reinforcement for Ludlow Festival was the inspiration of Alan Watson, a former mentor to a very young Jeff Byard from the age of 10. It was a very early start in PA system training for him!

In 1958, Watson devised an early form of surround sound (long before Dolby 5.1) by using remote speakers and 100 volt line valve amplifiers for Shakespeare's Comus at Ludlow, performed live in front of HRH Princess Margaret.

This work was highly commended by Times and Telegraph critics, many at that time considered any electro-acoustic 'treatment' in theatre was considered artificial, and superfluous to requirements. Indeed, local purists of Shakespeare had a lot to say about amplified effects, and not all thought amplified effects were a good idea either! Now of course, amplification and audio plays a vital role in the enjoyment of both theatre and live performances.

Jeff comments: 'I was a mere youth when I joined the festival in the early 70's, as a budding assistant. Most of the amplifiers for the sound were H/H electronic with Revox B77 reel to reel tape machines for playback of sound effects. Speakers were Wem, or Bose 802, MK1's which worked very well. The public address systems were run on very long cable lines (often up to 500 metres from the control position), with no loss of sound quality.

For the festival music concerts, which were mostly held at the Church, we used bespoke gear, which sounded remarkably good. In those days, we could run a jazz concert for an audience of 700 on a couple of hundred watts. 30 years on, International Jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine was using a 5,000 watt rig! How times have changed.'

Jeff Byard's work at the Ludlow Festival has encompassed many genres of music. Julian Lloyd Webber, Jools Holland and the Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, Dame Cleo Lane, The Halle Orchestra, Humphrey Lyttelton, Courtney Pine, and Chris Barber are just a few of the many acts that have performed at the festival. Jeff says: 'I always enjoy working with top class acts, they know precisely what they want, and you have to always do your best. It's also a challenge for us, as you may not have worked with them before, and you need to understand very quickly what they require from you, and what kind of sound balance they are looking for.

When the Opera Babes came to Ludlow, we used Schoeps mics throughout for pure sonic excellence. They were delighted with the detail in the sound quality, even in a reverberant church!

As any pro involved in providing concert sound would tell you, live events are totally spontaneous, and with it, comes the odd bit of mic feedback, mic popping, or level change for whatever reason. The sound engineer's real craft of course, is to make any mistakes unnoticeable to the audience, or at least that is the challenge we aim for.

We have found at Ludlow, some members of the audience have remarkably good hearing. Couple this with a deluge of retired ex-BBC engineers living there, and you have a very critical audience.

Jeff comments: 'It is good people care about quality of sound, we all should of course, but even visiting sound engineers for major performers (usually rock acts) have been amazed at some of the advice given freely at the mix position following the gig! I always see it as a challenge, if you achieve zero complaints, that means it must be better than excellent!'

For the internationally acclaimed Abba tribute band Bjorn Again, perfection really was sought, and Jeff Byard oversaw a radical design to improve the PA rig acoustics within the Castle outer bailey.

The surrounding walls of the moat and bailey had provided a stunning backdrop for the finale concert, but sadly the walls were creating problems with acoustics creating a sharp 'slap' which could actually be heard by the performers on stage. In the early days, the 'slap' became accepted by visiting PA rental companies, because there was not a lot that could be done about it with conventional ground stacked PA.

However, Bjorn Again were a major act, and the concert required high impact, high fidelity sound, it was decided something should be done to try and counteract it. With the help of SSE, Jeff Byard came up a scheme using line-array technology to it's maximum, from a single mono source.

'We arrived at the final decision by using acoustic prediction software (see our EASE projects pages for more details) which helped to calculate precise coverage angles and SPL level for every corner of the venue. The outer bailey is packed to capacity on finale night and we wanted everyone in the venue to enjoy the gig, as if they were right down by the front of the stage.

We used a crane to suspend the main speaker hang, with the sub-bass units going underneath the stage. We were able to electronically 'steer' the sound off the back wall by tapering off the signal off at the back of the venue, just short of the wall. That way, excess sound energy would not be given a chance to bounce, and create the problem.

With exact speaker alignment being critical to achieve our goal, we spent the best part of the morning concentrating on matching the rig to the computer model. It was not just a case of hoisting up speakers on this job, if we were ever going to solve this problem it had to be very precise work.

When the crane driver was ready to lift the speaker rig into it's final position, crane-drivers 'jib up/down' signals had to be adopted rather rapidly, as dangling quarter of a ton of speaker was not for the faint hearted underneath! The angle of incidence was crucial, especially for those listening towards the back. It had to be spot on, otherwise we would simply not have achieved the perfect clarity as the acoustic simulation software had originally predicted.

It all paid off and the event went remarkably well on the night, with numerous commendations from the audience saying what a remarkable improvement is we made – quite an enviable achievement for a very demanding audience!

Ludlow Festival has seen many changes in recent years, including a 3-week long event programme. We have witnessed many developments in sound technology since the valve days.