To accommodate the vast media contingent that follows such a huge event the Zayed Sports City Stadium decided to upgrade some of the facilities and equipment within the media suites, this included the installation of six channels of Sennheiser's new 2000 series. The installation and commissioning was taken care of by live sound specialist Trevor Cronin.
" From previous experience, the transmission range and reliability of the Sennheiser wireless products made this manufacturer my obvious first choice for such a large venue, as I need to get reliable coverage from every corner of the 45,000 seat capacity stadium," says Cronin.
In order to aid with the coverage requirement Cronin also included two AD-3700 directional antennas in the system. "The AD-3700's have built in boosters and can be daisy-chained straight through all the receivers without the need for additional antenna distribution, very handy. On checking the signal with the WSM software running, we found we had superb reception all over the stadium, even with the antennas located behind the control room glass window.
"I'm yet to do a firmware upgrade on the transmitters and that will see their output power increase from 50mW to 100mW, but so far I have not needed it.
"The RF spectrum recording tool is also a fantastic utility for use in this stadium environment, with its multitude of broadcast operators using a load of the available frequencies. You can quickly see where there is some space for your system and reprogram really quickly using the infra-red sync facility."
The supply of the system was undertaken by Sennheiser's UAE distributor Venuetech and included six EM-2050 receivers with two AD-3700 antennas, six SKM-2000 handheld transmitters with 835 capsules and six EK-2000 beltpack transmitters with MKE-1 lapel mic's.
(Jim Evans)
