Akun Tehdras put in place a dual redundancy system throughout, which effectively meant two of everything, one of which was purely for back-up purposes. As InnovaSON's technical field manager, Matthieu Le Failler pointed out, "When your show is being performed in front of 12,000 people and going out live to 100 million more, downtime is NOT an option." This meant A and B systems each comprising an Sy48 at FoH handled by engineer Kimmo Ahola, which was fed by an InnovaSON DioCore EtherSound-enabled stage box which also fed the Sy80 console at the monitor position.
Engineers Klas Granqvist and Arto Nuppola were in charge of monitors. An analogue splitter system on stage distributed the microphone signals to the A and B DioCores, and from that point on the signal was transmitted digitally over two separate EtherSound networks, each of which allows the transmission of up to 64 channels in both directions. In this particular instance Akun Tehdas opted for optical cable rather than Cat 5 as the 120m distance between FoH and monitors was too great for Cat 5 to handle effectively.
Although each system was set up to act independently, they were nevertheless linked to allow for flip-flopping between the two. "It helped us with the changeovers which had to be extremely fast and transparent," noted Le Failler, "and it also meant that engineers on the B system didn't get bored! The whole show went like a dream from an audio point of view and the consoles behaved impeccably. In fact, I had virtually nothing to do. Akun Tehdas did a fantastic job, as did the engineers, and that's the way I like it."
(Jim Evans)
