For audio production company Norwest Productions, it was all par for the course. The company first came to international attention a decade ago when they supplied the audio requirements for the Sydney Olympic Games ceremonies. Since then they have earned the reputation as a world leader in successfully tackling the audio requirements of large scale stadium shows racking up successful events such as two of the three Summer Olympics, both Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games in Doha. This year alone they have serviced the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Singapore Youth Olympics and now the Commonwealth Games Delhi.
As Norwest Productions also happen to own the largest hire inventory of Optocore devices in the Southern Hemisphere they were again able to provide an Optocore fibre network backbone for signal transport, constructed around 10 nodes.
Norwest teamed with regional, Mumbai-based sound production company, Sound.com, to supply the entire audio package and crew - most of the Norwest crew coming straight to Delhi from the Singapore Youth Olympics.
On arrival, Norwest's project manager Andrew Rodd discovered the renovated Jawaharlal Nehru stadium was nowhere near completion, having no mains power, no control booths or spaces, and the field of play was having serious water drainage issues. Consequently bump in was delayed by a whole two weeks on what was already a tight schedule.
Ten days out from the opening two of Sound.com's key personnel, including their network engineer for the amplifiers, were struck down with Dengue fever and Norwest had to hastily fly extra crew members out from Australia.
Scott Willsallen of Auditoria was contracted to design and manage the audio system for both the opening and closing ceremonies. Scott's design utilised over 200 loudspeakers, a 10-node Optocore digital audio network, over 100 power amplifiers and a dual redundant digital audio mixing and control system. The design allowed for flexibility to meet the continuously changing requirements of both Ceremonies.
The Optocore system picked up and delivered audio to and from seven locations around the field of play. The main FOH mix console, a 96-channel Yamaha PM1D system and main monitor console, a 96-channel Soundcraft Vi6, were both connected digitally to the Optocore network. The broadcaster had access to all inputs and some sub-mixes from the FOH console at the Optocore node provided to them.
Each Crown HD amplifier was connected via AES from the Optocore network. Optocore X6 converters were used throughout the system which meant that an input would be converted to digital once mixed and sent back to the processors in the Crown HD amps all in the digital realm. Audio replay was also provided by Norwest in the form of a matching pair of Merging Technology Pyramix Mass Core DAW's that delivered all show audio to the Optocore network via MADI. In total around 2000m of fibre connected all Optocore nodes.
The backup system consisted of identical mixing systems, which were fed the same inputs via analogue.
(Jim Evans)
