"It was an impressive setup," recalled digital audio specialist Fred Blanc-Garin, who was there on behalf of the ONL. "We essentially brought in the ONL's recently installed digital studio setup that now features a RAVENNA network, but we had to supplement it with additional material."
In total there were two Lawo mc256 consoles: the first at FoH operated by experienced engineer and ONL veteran, Francois Gabert, who was also managing monitors from FoH, and the second console from Paris-based live audio recording specialists, Yasta, in a separate room for audio capture for recording and broadcast. The recording console was set up and operated by Delphine Hannotin from INA.
For the 100-piece orchestra and 200-strong choir the ONL team deployed a total of 78 digital microphones on stage, which meant that ten Neumann DMI-8 interfaces equipped with RAVENNA cards were required. Once collected by the DMIs, the microphone signals were packed into RAVENNA multicast streams and sent to a network switch where the streams were automatically duplicated. One set of streams was received by the FoH console and the second went to the broadcast console, and then on again to the Pyramix DAW.
"It was the first time any of us had set up an event of this scale using RAVENNA technology which needed to demonstrate flawless interoperability between equipment from several different manufacturers," explained Blanc-Garin. "As such, it was a lot of work (we expected that) but we were lucky to have first-class support from all concerned, especially Lawo and Neumann. The results were worth every second of the time invested - on the night everything worked perfectly and we all had huge smiles on our faces, from the technicians to the musicians and of course the audience. No other networking technology can offer this level of performance and scalability, and I'm convinced we've set the standard for the future."
(Jim Evans)
