Combining the official start of the build up to London 2012 with a celebration of the remarkable success of Team GB in Beijing, the day was also a major success for Sennheiser, working in conjunction with Britannia Row.
All the presenter mics on the day were Sennheiser SKM 5200 handhelds with Neumann KK 105 heads, and those same mics were used by Il Divo and The Feeling.
Heather Small, Sophie Ellis Bextor and Will Young chose SKM 935s, as did the cast of We Will Rock You, who also employed HSP 4 headsets. All the in ear monitors for the artists in the show were Sennheiser ew 300 IEM G2s.
Andy Lillywhite, Sennheiser's chief engineer, was on site for the duration of the event, working alongside RF technician Barry Macleod and the Britannia Row team. Due to the location of the stage Lillywhite and Britannia Row faced some interesting technical challenges.
"The combination of such a large performance area and well over sixty RF channels in use meant that we had to be quite innovative with the antenna systems," says Lillywhite. "For the radio microphones we used eight receiving antennas plus a custom made active RF combiner and distribution system. The longest antenna cable runs were about 125m, which is not something we'd normally recommend doing. The end result was that everything worked and it was good to see so many of the performing artists making full use of the freedom of movement that you can only get with wireless microphones and in-ears, going right out along the huge runway in to the crowd."
(Jim Evans)
