Mountbatten Festival Marches into Royal Albert Hall

London, UK (August 13, 2025)—DiGiCo consoles were at FOH and in the OB truck when the Royal Albert Hall recently hosted the Mountbatten Festival of Music, which raises funds for Royal Navy and Royal Marines charities.

Zen Broadcast mixed the event for live streaming, a DVD and album release in their OB truck with Zen’s sound supervisor and music associate Andy Deacon behind a DiGiCo SD7B. “This OB truck is built around the SD7B, and before that, the SD10,” Deacon explains. “DiGiCo just works for us. We set the truck’s racks to the lowest Optocore ID and they become the sync source. This means everything on the Optocore loop will automatically clock to the truck. Running the network in this way delivers an elegant solution for a show of this size.”

In the hall, Ben Milton at FOH and Bill Birks at monitors both mixed through DiGiCo Quantum7 consoles supplied by Terry Tew Sound & Light. “Getting this show in front of the audiences in such a tight timeframe requires dedication from everyone involved, especially the bands,” Milton recalls. “Terry Tew Sound & Light provide the Quantum7s for the whole production run, so we keep the same consoles from rehearsals in Portsmouth right the way through to the Royal Albert Hall. This means we are fully prepped once we get to the venue, saving valuable time.”

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The first Mountbatten Festival of Music was held in 1973, as part of the Royal Academy of Music’s 150th anniversary appeal and has been on the bill ever since. With more than 50 years of performance, it is one of the Royal Albert Hall’s longest running returning shows. The performances feature the Massed Bands of His Majesty’s Royal Marines in a spectacular celebration of pageantry and skill, performing to sold-out audiences over two days, accompanied by special guests and solo artists appearing on stage and via the big screens.

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“The console-to-console comms help to streamline things, too,” Birks says. “I take 90% of the inputs individually, but there are some channels that I don’t need, until someone suddenly does! A quick call or message to Ben and they’re available to add; it’s brilliant. Restructuring to add or take away inputs or outputs is all very intuitive and useful for organizing the console layout.”