Luminex

I want to take you back to the very beginning of my journey in live sound. I was working for Oliver Mtukudzi, one of the greatest musicians this continent has ever produced, and I was the new guy full of questions. One day I pointed at this thick cable running from stage to front of house, and I asked one of the senior engineers, Mkhoma Wanda, what is that cable? What is that cable? for, and what does it actually do? It was a multicoil, a cable that carries all your audio signals from stage to the mixer at front of house. And when I asked him to explain what it was for, you know, what— and also what it did, he told me it was not a simple thing for him to put into words, not at that moment anyway, because we were busy setting up. So I basically waited, and in time I figured out, you know, on my own from watching the other setups. Fast forward a few years, I knew it all. Multicore, XLR, signal flow. I understood how audio moved from the stage all the way to the front of house mixer and also to the PA, which is the final destination in the live sound path or basically live sound signal flow. Then something new arrived around 2013. Fiber and network systems started entering pro audio here in Africa, and I was there for that early adoption. In 2014, I was the head touring sound engineer for Ultrafest, working under Gearhouse. We ran the first show in Cape Town and then the second show in Johannesburg. And in Cape Town, I was running fiber. I remember during the setup, the 2 fiber lines, A and B, got crossed by mistake, which meant I lost my devices on stage, my ELAC acoustic amplifiers, my Dante audio to the PA, all gone from the network. And suddenly the whole thing felt overwhelming. The switches had been configured remotely in Europe. By someone with all of these settings buried inside on site, you know, you were almost afraid to basically touch anything. So as a senior technician, how does this fiber thing actually work? And he looked at me and said, honestly, bro, this thing is so complicated, most people will never understand it. But that never really sat right with me because I have always, always believed that no technology is built to be difficult on purpose, none of it. And I feel every engineer in Africa is still working on those older switches, the ones that are not purpose-built for live events, still trying to get their head around the networking side of it. It can truly be be frustrating because the truth is all you really need is a reliable infrastructure to move your audio. As a live sound engineer, our job is to basically set up, get ready, do the show, pack up, go home. The moment the technology takes center stage, it basically pulls us away from the one thing we are there to do, which is basically sound reinforcement. That is exactly why I want to introduce you to Luminex. Luminex Network Intelligence is a Belgian company founded in 2002 that builds network switches specifically for the live events industry. And their whole philosophy is that you do not need to be an IT expert to basically use them. Let me tell you about the first time I opened their software. Nobody had to he had trained me and nobody walked me through it. And within minutes I understood it. It was simple and it was basically very logical. You see a port on the screen, right, on that software, and then you decide what you want it to do. Do you want it to like on its own private network, a VLAN? You basically just choose it. Do you want it to carry Dante audio? You choose it. Do you want power over Ethernet, you switch it on or switch it off, you basically decide. But it's very simple, very clear on that user interface. You customize each port and you know exactly what it will do without needing to understand the plumbing underneath. Luminex makes it that easy. Ed Sheeran World Tour ran its entire audio network on 20 Luminex switches. Coldplay also uses Luminex. Beyoncé uses Luminex. It is It has been the backbone for the Eurovision Song Contest, also for the Olympic Games and many other shows. The biggest and most complex productions on Earth choose the simple, reliable tool because it works. And that is why this matters for Africa. For years, just getting your head around the complexity of audio over fiber has kept these systems out of reach. And he has left much of Africa running long analog cables because the digital way feels too complicated to trust. I remember doing an event for 50,000-seat stadium show for Pastor Chris Oke Oyakhilome from Christ Embassy Church in Port Harcourt in Nigeria in 2018. We were getting audio to the Overflow venues meant running more than 100 meters of analog XLR cable simply because there was no simple digital way to do it. Luminex basically changes that. It too, this simple means you do not need to like advanced IT skills to basically deploy it because it is purpose-built solution for the live events. You can run it yourself. This is how we close the gap by choosing the tools that are purpose-built for the live events. You are only considered a professional when you use professional tools. I'm Remember. Thanks for watching.