Studio 3 is the new home of the Top of the Pops and Later with Jools Holland broadcasts, and the request for Kelsey's involvement came directly from the sound supervisor responsible for both programmes. Mike Felton explained: "We were temporarily housed at Riverside Studios for TOTP whilst the move and refurb was going on, and SSE were supplying all the monitoring and PA facilities. They use Kelsey's 32-way multicore as standard, and having used it ourselves, Gary [Clarke, sound supervisor TOTP] and I immediately requested that a compatible line system be installed in Studio 3. It entirely fitted the bill of what we were looking for."
Felton went on to explain that the key features were reliability and flexibility. "When you are using anything up to 160 circuits for just one programme which is basically five lots of 32-way multicore systems that have to be set up and broken down again in record time, they have to be tough to cope with the hurly-burly and the hostile; environment of professional use. Reliability is an essential feature for us, and the Kelsey equipment, which is military spec, seems more than tough enough for the job. It also allows us great flexibility, which is another important requirement on big music shows like TOTP and Jools Holland. We are able to derive circuits from just about anywhere without having to resort to temporary equipment to enhance the original system. We have everything we need right here - no last-minute scrambles for stuff that you suddenly realise you can't do when you thought you could! We're very pleased with the results."
