The IFA in Berlin is deemed to be the world's largest consumer electronics fair. The biggest showcase by a single exhibitor is that of Sony, which takes up a whole hall, an area of 6,000sq.m, this year developing an enchanted forest concept, with thick white floors to absorb sound, soft round shapes and bare white trees.
Under the direction of technical director Peter Mader, Limelight Veranstaltungstechnik was responsible for the coordination of technical production, creating a show environment from synchronised lighting, video and audio that evolved from black night through to dawn, with a sunrise video sun showing on two large HD projections (47m x 8m). All lighting, video and audio was synchronised.
For Limelight, Marcel Petras was responsible for the sound in the hall, using principally a CAMCO-powered line array system made up of Nexo's Geo S12 modules. "We used the new Geo S12, which is mid-way between the small S8 and the large T system, because it was ideal for this booth. It has more low mids than the smaller S8 and it is lighter than the larger T system, which was too heavy for this application. The S12 system was completed by eight Nexo RS15 basses in cardioid mode," explained Petras.
The special challenge for the sound specialists from Gilching was the continually changing demands on the PA, which had to handle dispersion of the star guest Til Schweiger and the performance of the world's fastest violinist, David Garrett and his band, to every corner of the booth, maintaining a constant level over the whole area.
Altogether they used eleven small arrays, using 46 boxes across the centre, left and right of the stage. All systems were networked via Ethersound protocol, controlled by Yamaha M7CL and Yamaha LS9 digital over fibre-optic lines with full redundancy, using two Auvitran AVRED ES-optical network redundancy managers. This allowed the consoles to provide input to the amplifiers which would not have been possible using an analogue system. With remote control, it was possible to make modifications to any part of the system anywhere in the room, and check the result immediately.
(Jim Evans)
