DiGiCo at heart of 54th Polish song festival
- Details
This festival is the annual celebration of the Polish music scene, transmitted live by the national public broadcaster TVP to a multimillion audience. This year it was also a tribute to one of Poland's greatest artists Maryla Rodowicz, who celebrated her 50th anniversary on stage at the festival. DiGiCo’s SD5, SD12 and SD-Racks, equipped with the latest 32-Bit Mic Pre-Amp cards, played a central role in the event.
Almost three weeks of preparation and six days of intensive artist, sound, lighting and camera rehearsals took place from early morning to the dark of night, with dozens of people involved in the production of this three-day event.
The digital mixing system used for the audience PA in the venue had to work seamlessly with the television OB truck's mixers, as well as providing the highest quality sound, failsafe redundancy and ultimate reliability during the live TV feed. DiGiCo consoles were chosen to meet all requirements.
Responsibility for delivering and operating the venue’s PA system went one of the largest and most reputable Polish rental companies, Gigant Sound – Letus
"DiGiCo was an obvious choice, right from the start when the contract was signed for this event,” says Jerzy ‘Gigant’ Taborowski, owner of the company and a highly-experienced specialist in electroacoustic systems. “The high demands of this production, the need to ensure reliability and the complexity of the project was made possible by using DiGiCo consoles.”
A DiGiCo SD5 was deployed at Front of House. Operated by Paweł Zakrzewski and Jakub Mikołajczak, it shared an Optocore redundant optical loop with five DiGiCo SD-Racks, each with a maximum configuration of 56 analogue inputs, 40 analogue outputs and 16 digital outputs. One of the SD-Racks, which supported the most important input channels, the main wireless microphones, featured the latest 32 Bit Mic Preamp cards, offering 32-bit resolution and dynamic sound quality.
Operated by Tomasz Zajma, head of monitors, alongside Pawel Goliński and Wojciech Rzechówka, the complex monitor system consisted of the main monitor console, based on another DiGiCo SD5, plus two new SD12 consoles.
“After we did the first mix with the extended electroacoustic system, the quality of the sound was striking and proved that DiGiCo consoles, in the hands of experienced engineers, are a perfect, quick tool for professional work,” adds Gigant. “With help from the Polsound technical support staff, DiGiCo’s polish distributor, and our head of sound tech, Marcin Szafrański and system engineer Jakub Mikołajczak, we managed to create a complex, yet simple and reliable audio transmission network based on the Optocore protocol, to create several output mixes, a huge number of input channels and seamless cooperation with the TVP OB trucks to implement a very complex monitor system. All of this proved not only possible, but fun to work with."
(Jim Evans)
