As part of a series of posts from this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, Jim Bradley-Webster, senior acoustic development engineer at Bowers & Wilkins, opens up about their mission to make UK talent sound as good as possible on stage… 

Three years ago, we were approached by our longstanding partner, the BPI, to get involved with the British Music Embassy (BME) at SXSW. It wasn’t a platform we were familiar with, but the more we learned about its legacy for supporting the very best emerging British music talent, we knew we had to be involved. It was a very easy decision to make, and we haven’t looked back since. We’re very fortunate to work closely with the talented teams from Production Park and Allen & Heath, as well as highly skilled sound engineers, to bring the production together.  

It was important that however we were to be involved really added value to the BME and felt like an authentic integration. Elevating the sound quality for live performances was an obvious route forward. 

For over six years, our custom-built high-performance PA, Sound System, had been sitting in the factory in Worthing and required a significant upgrade to bring it back to life. For many years, we deployed the system at leading music festivals such as Primavera and WOMAD, so the BME provided a perfect opportunity for the team to work towards revitalising the system and restoring it to its former glory. 

A small team of us spent over nine months working on revitalising the system as a side project, rebuilding it with the latest tech and components, many of which can be found in our studio-grade loudspeakers.

We start planning over six months before arriving in Austin, specifying the system needs based on the venue and space it will be deployed in, trying to foresee any potential hurdles and ultimately trying to get the best quality sound coverage in the space. 

We arrived less than a week before the BME officially opens and the space very quickly moves from an empty courtyard to what looks like a mini-British music festival in Austin, so there’s many logistical challenges with so many teams working around each other to be ready to hit the ground running on opening night. 

It has been a real privilege being a part of this collective of talented and passionate people involved with making the BME this incredibly special platform

Jim Bradley-Webster

Once the system has been installed, we start to tune it to optimise it for the space. This includes a series of measurements to try and get some objective results of how it will sound, followed by lots of critical listening to get it to a standard that we expect from Bowers & Wilkins. 

During the event, we will closely monitor the system, making sure nothing overheats, and distortion is kept to a minimum. We work closely with the sound engineers to ensure that quality of the sound is kept up to our high standards. 

Deploying Sound System is very different to conventional PA systems. It requires a lot more attention to detail, a specialist team to run it and a deep understanding of its limits. The wide breadth of musical styles and genres on stage throughout the week presents other challenges, but it’s thrilling to see the system bring the performances to life in such an exhilarating way, with the help of our production partners and engineers. 

It has been a real privilege being a part of this collective of talented and passionate people involved with making the BME this incredibly special platform. Witnessing the huge amount of exceptional emerging music talent coming out of the UK has been incredibly rewarding and we’re looking forward to seeing their careers kicking on from here.