Alex Grigore from VDC Trading talks to Entec's technical manager, Peter Eltringham, about how his engineers care passionately about sound, doing the best by their clients and trusting the cables they use.

You are very invested in flyracks and the redundancy within those which is fascinating and a great solution for touring events.  How has VDC added value to that system?

How we look after our clients, and how we package our gear is what makes us stand out from the crowd. Being part of a market of independent production companies feeds into that - we constantly strive to improve on one another’s designs. Healthy competition between peers is what drives innovation and helps the industry progress, year on year.

As new products become available, we are always looking at whether they are right for us or our clients, will they add value, improve quality or simplify workflow?  This is true of the cable and the connectors we use.  A great example of that is Neutrik’s new FiberFox series and this is something we have heavily invested in through VDC.

The new PA returns system and festival/stadium amp racks have been a big step forward this year for Entec. It was important for us to engineer something which was fit for purpose for the larger scale shows we’re now taking on board. Design and planning started in earnest last year, with most decisions being finalised by the end of January to make sure we gave our suppliers enough time to come through. One of the main requirements of all projects is redundancy and resilience. Our end of the system simply cannot fail. It has to work.

One factor in that is the hardware itself. This led us to opt for a redundant optocore loop to send signal back to the amplifiers, on top of this we had our control network infrastructure separate and isolated from all the audio transport. I can lose remote access to the amplifiers, I can lose wi-fi, but the music keeps playing. Connecting all of this is Van Damme cable, with Neutrik and VDM connectors made in large part by VDC.

There’s little point to spending thousands on the right gear and linking it together with cheap cable. I want everything that my engineers grab out a case or take off the peg to be something they can trust.

The new returns and amp racks have all new cable in. Custom looms made to measure for power, signal and network. All checked and quality controlled to make sure that they are the perfect complement to the effort we put into the design. Sometimes equipment like amplifiers stop working. But with this setup, it won’t be because of the cable.

Partnering with VDC to get a large part of the fabrication done for these projects was an obvious choice. We needed a lot of new stock, made to spec, and delivered on time. This year, for the first time we asked if VDC could do our standard colour-coding and barcodes. Considering it will be on there for the life of the cable, it’s important to get it right, and the team at VDC really came through. Everything was done as requested and the time/cost saving has meant we will definitely be looking to repeat this with future orders.

Tell us about one tool or processing unit in your racks that you couldn't live without?

Direct Out Prodigy, having used Lake LM44’s for years, moving to this for our drive system has been huge upgrade. It’s given us a lot more flexibility at front of house and is a key part of our new PA returns system. It fits right into our redundancy and resilience philosophy.

Who is the most revered act you've had the pleasure to work with?

All our clients are important to us, no one act gets special attention over and above the others. However, every year we get a chance to work on Teenage Cancer Trust’s week of shows at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s a partnership we’ve had with the charity for decades. It’s a real privilege to be involved in a production which works to raise money for a really important cause.

How did you get introduced into the world of Van Damme cables?

Van Damme cables have always been around, I don’t know when I was first introduced, but it’s a brand that you become aware of through osmosis. Their tour grade series is always a go-to for new cable fabrication.

Which of our cables or devices specifically are currently the bread and butter of your productions?

We rely on 12pair multicore for all our analogue veam, Cat6A flexible tourCat for all our networking under 50m and Cat7 tourcat for anything above. More recently the reduced OD 4mm speaker cable has been a fantastic upgrade to our exisitng infrastructure.