All of the signals from the parade floats (outfitted with wireless audio-six in all), including NBC's The Voice float, were mixed and routed through a DiGiCo SD10 digital console and fed to the audience PA at the start of the parade route as well as also being sent as a broadcaster pool feed. This year the parade was broadcast live in the US on nine TV stations, including ABC, NBC and Los Angeles station KTLA5, as well as reached tens of millions of viewers worldwide via eight international networks, and was streamed live over a variety of internet platforms.
Technical director for the 125th annual Rose Parade's opening and closing live performance events was Ron 'Elvis' Stephan, who was hired by FiveCurrents, a creative consultant and production firm that specializes in major events such as the Olympics and the Super Bowl. "We've worked with Rat Sound Systems in the past and they do good work, so they got the gig," Stephan reports. Once Jon Monson, Rat Sound's director of touring and production, understood the complexity of the show, says Stephan, he recommended the SD10.
Stephan continues, "I'm spoiled, because Steve McNeil at MacWestGroup, DiGiCo's rep in Long Beach, CA, is a friend of mine. He's brought the console out on a lot of the gigs that we've done. I've always been blown away by how they sound; they really sound great. I love DiGiCo boards-they're awesome."
The SD10's fibre connectivity was critical. According to Jamie Harris, Rat Sound's local events account manager, two 150m fibre lines were run to local host broadcaster KTLA's engineers. "We had originally discussed using another console with a separate modular I/O junction at the base of the grandstand to run audio 380 feet to the broadcast truck and feed a hard line under Colorado as a backup to the PA's RF sends that were sent directly from the console," Harris recalls. "However, we gladly changed to the SD10 to use fibre giving us the flexibility to send and receive to and from the broadcast truck as well as remove the junction and the analogue run to the truck that would be ripe for noise and ground faults."
Ivan Ortiz, Rat Sound's A1 on the show, ran the SD10 at 96 kHz, mixing inputs including announcer wireless mics, float wireless audio and crowd mics, which were then distributed from the 56x24 MADI Rack to the PA covering the seating below the front of house position and to an SD-Rack 56x24 to provide outputs and mix minus mixes to KTLA engineers. "Having the SD10 at FOH gave me plenty of flexibility to deal with the performers' mics being used in front of the PA for the grandstand performance, with plenty of graphic EQs and compression available, and routing to either local or remote locations," says Ortiz.
(Jim Evans)
