Aimed at 10-22 year olds, this year's Ideen Expo was the third time that the event had taken place. Opened by German president Christian Wulff, the 80,000m2 exhibition attracted over 310,000 people and featured a wide range of exhibits, including a several live performance stages, a fairground, numerous stalls and other interactive exhibits.
Hamburg-based Neumann & Müller supplied the event's huge technical infrastructure which, under the guidance of the company's Roger Clarke, took 85 staff 20,000 man hours to install. Fundamental to the event's success was a five kilometre, star topology Gigabit fibre optic network, which carried a range of audio, video and lighting control signals. The audio included announcements, voice alarms, background music, communications and control for 130 amplifiers, including all of those on the live stages.
A Yamaha DME64N with three Dante-MY16-AUD interface cards handled a 32x32 matrix to control inputs and outputs. This transmitted all signals into four network rings, which featured eight DME24N, as well as Yamaha PM5D and LS9 digital mixing consoles, all featuring Dante cards.
"When we developed Dante, we delivered an easy to use, standards-based compliant IP over Ethernet networking solution for the professional audio/visual (AV) industry," says Audinate CEO Lee Ellison. "Ideen Expo showcased major advancements in AV and it seemed appropriate that Dante and Yamaha were the foundation behind the event."
Event technical director Martin Wunderlich was very pleased with the system, saying, "The decision to use the Yamaha / Dante combination was absolutely right. The network was easy to set up, program and it worked flawlessly.
"We also programmed a smart DME user interface, controlled using a touchscreen, for the official security staff. If required, at any time they could interrupt the audio at any stage or location and use the microphone in the control room to broadcast a message. In the cases of most announcements, the music level was dimmed by the DMEs onboard volume duckers. However if it had been an emergency, it would have cut altogether."
"It was an extraordinary event," says Arthur Koll, commercial audio sales engineer at Yamaha Music Europe. "The audio, lighting and video infrastructure alone took up 21 trucks and it was an excellent opportunity to show that a Yamaha / Dante digital media networking system can satisfy very complex requirements, yet also be very straightforward to install, set up and operate."
(Jim Evans)
