DirectOut supports Pavarotti tribute concert
- Details
Artists who played with the Maestro during the numerous editions of Pavarotti & Friends wanted to be on stage for this occasion to ‘sing’ again with the Maestro, requiring 226 channels of mic and line signals coming from the band, the orchestra, the choir, the solo singers and the announcers, with 24 additional playback tracks of Pavarotti’s voice.
Agorà, the Italian production company that supported the event, chose two pairs of DiGiCo SD7 for mixing both in front of house and on stage. Two more DiGiCo SD11 were added in both locations to manage the mics of the announcers and special guests. Two SSL L500 consoles used in sharing mode were chosen to handle the mix for the broadcast feeds reaching the Rai OB Van and the national radios.
Daniele Tramontani and Stevan Martinovic, chief engineers at Agorà, designed the signal distribution system along with support from Luca Giaroli from DirectOut.
Two different solutions were chosen to enhance redundancy for the signal distribution. A full analogue transportation was provided through four DiGiCo SD Racks and eight SSL ML32. A second full Madi solution was adopted by using the DiGiCo optical loop to feed the SD7 consoles and two DirectOut M.1K2 madi routers in “doppelgaenger” (mirror) mode which were collecting the signals from the coaxial Madi outputs of the SD Racks and were providing them to the SD11 consoles and to the two multitrack recording stations.
The 1024x1024 channels DirectOut M.1K2 routers were also collecting the signals coming from the playback rig and were distributing them to both the SD7 consoles and the multitrack recording stations.
The playback rig was composed by a pair of MacBook Pros, one master and one slave, connected to the Madi loop via two RME sound-cards. In order to improve the redundancy level of the playback system and to ensure automatic and inaudible switchover between the sources in case of one failing, Daniele and his team chose to rely upon two DirectOut EXBOX.BLDS.
BLDS stands for Buffer Loop Detection SystemTM, a technology by DirectOut which detects unwanted audio interruptions or corrupted input signals and automatically performs a reliable switch-over within a single audio sample.
“Several DirectOut devices were chosen for this live/broadcast event to ease the collection and distribution of lots of signals and increase the overall level of redundancy. And this makes us very proud,” says Luca Giaroli, “It was a pleasure to support Daniele and the Agorà team, long-time happy users of our products, and the success of the event proves once more the quality, reliability and flexibility of our devices, which can really adapt to any kind of situation, being it a live show, a broadcasted event or a fixed installation.”
(Jim Evans)
