Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is a large-scale outdoor live event staged on the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade, with audiences surrounding the performance area on three sides. From an audio perspective, the production presents a highly unusual challenge: massed bands, performers, musicians and featured artists are constantly moving through a wide and deep outdoor arena, meaning localisation, delay management and time alignment must continually support what the audience is seeing.
The system design uses a combination of distributed loudspeaker arrays, spatial programming and show control to reinforce the natural acoustic energy of the performers without overwhelming it. For the 2024 production, Auditoria’s design included 14 Kiva II arrays on custom frames, 64 5XT front fills for platform coverage and nearfield localisation, 13 5XT and 7 SB10i for VIP areas, 24 SB15m subwoofers, and two Gatehouse arrays of four K2 each. L-Acoustics Soundvision was used for acoustic modelling, with TiMax providing spatial programming and delay management.
The control system was designed for reliability and consistency in a challenging outdoor environment. The 2024 setup included two TiMax SoundHub processors, timecode-locked TiMax programming based on tracked rehearsals, dual-engine DiGiCo Quantum 7 consoles at both FOH and monitors, and redundant AVB and Optocore signal distribution networks. The production also used more than 150 wireless IEM packs, including Shure Axient Digital, Shure PSM1000 and Sennheiser SR2050 systems.
For 2025, the system was further refined, including additional elements in the North and South grandstand arrays to improve level consistency and tonal balance for the rear seats. FOH and monitor consoles were also upgraded with the DiGiCo Theatre licence to streamline programming across complex session files, while TiMax SoundHub processors continued to be used for localisation and timing.
The system was designed by Auditoria Systems' Ethan Curry and Scott Willsallen, whom I worked closely with as the System Specialist for Solotech UK.
My role on the Tattoo
I have been involved with the project for over two years now as the System Specialist for Solotech UK.
In 2024, I was onsite in Edinburgh for the duration of the production including all shows (three weeks in August) with two and a half weeks of build and production rehearsals onsite and ten days of prep time at the warehouse in Birmingham.
My experience with large scale systems of similar natures lent itself well as I was able to build, programme and operate the complicated audio distribution system for the duration of the run.
In 2025, I returned to do the build and production period and provide system and local knowledge to the show team. With the specified added redundant Direct Out Prodigy AVB and AES system implementation I programmed and troubleshooted the system during the build time to ensure it ran smoothly. Due to my experience with broadcast and comms systems I also worked to ensure the handover to those departments once onsite was as smooth as possible and that all departments had everything that they needed before we got to site.
I will be returning to the project again this year as System Engineer and Specialist, drawing on new skills and knowledge of complex audio systems gained over the last year. I will also be working with the Account Handler Robin Conway to ensure that the paperwork for future teams is well documented (including CAD drawings, schematics and patch plans etc).
