New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde returned to arenas with the Ultrasound World Tour in support of her fourth studio album, Virgin. The production uses L-Acoustics L Series loudspeakers supplied by Clair Global, with L-ISA Hyperreal Sound added for the North American dates. FOH engineer Philip J Harvey, who has mixed Lorde tours since 2014, framed the system around the contrast between forceful electronic material and exposed vocal moments.
For North America, Clair Global’s standard arena deployment used an L-Acoustics Scene system made up of five arrays, each with three L2 over one L2D, plus two matching L Series out-fill arrays and left-right hangs of 12 Kara II for 220-degree fill. Low-frequency reinforcement came from 16 flown KS28 subwoofers in two central hangs of eight, with four KS21 built into the stage face as front-fill subs. The front-fill layout also included 12 A10 Wide across the stage lip, two more A10 in front of the thrust, and ground out fill using one A10 Focus and one A10 Wide over two KS21 at the far left and right; at Madison Square Garden, three L2 were added in an LCR hang over the rear of the main floor to address the large central video display.
The system was powered by 24 LA7.16 amplified controllers for the L Series enclosures and 18 LA12X for the rest of the rig, with two L-ISA Processor II units, including one redundant backup, supporting the object-based mix. Processing and control ran through two P1 processors over Milan-AVB with LA Network Manager, while Soundvision Autosolvers and Autofilters helped systems engineer Chris Demonbreun adapt the design from venue to venue. The L2 and L2D format, described as covering the same contour as four K2 elements while being 46 percent smaller and 40 percent lighter, helped keep the flown system visually cleaner, and the Clamp 1000 allowed ground-level array rotation for repeatable azimuth control in an L-ISA arena workflow.