DELHI, India – Bringing together more than 50 nations from around the world, the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India opened its 12-day athletic competition with a multi-array JBL VerTec line array system powered by Crown I-Tech HD amplifiers to support the opening ceremonies.
The system filled the 60,000-capacity Nehru Stadium for the event, which featured nearly 5,000 athletes. Audio production companies Norwest Productions (Australia) and Sound.com (India) collaborated to implement Auditoria's event system design in the field.
Scott Willsallen of Auditoria, whose experience with games ceremonies includes the Athens 2004 Olympics, Doha 2006 Asian Games and the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, was contracted by the organizing committee for the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games to design and manage the audio system for both the opening and closing ceremonies.
Twenty-five distributed JBL VerTec arrays lined the stadium to cover the crowd from the floor seats to the upper levels. Eight of the arrays featured three JBL VT4889 full-size line array elements and 17 contained three VT4888 midsize line array elements, with each also including a fullsize VerTec arrayable subwoofer. One hundred and two Crown amplifiers, including 92 I-Tech HD amplifiers, powered the JBL VerTec rig. Harman's HiQnet System Architect system software was used for configuration, remote control and monitoring of the system.
"The VerTec V4 DSP tunings are excellent. The only additional tuning we had to do was some minor notch filtering to tidy up the response in the venue," said Willsallen, who also credited Norwest and Sound.com for their support. "It was all very subtle filtering. If it came down to it, we could have run the show very successfully without any additional EQ filtering."
On the field of play, 25 JBL SRX712M speakers were used for the performers' monitor system, while 32 JBL CBT70J column speakers and JBL SRX718S subwoofers were used to ensure that athletes on the field could experience the event's sound. On the main stage, JBL VRX915M monitor wedges were utilized for musical performances.
The stadium's sound was also supported by Electro-Voice gear. The EV loudspeaker spec included 132 customized XLC127DVX (line-array), 120 Sx300PI, 300 EVID 6.2, and 60 ZX5-60PI surface-mounted systems, all driven by a combination of 135 P3000RL and TG amplifiers to deliver an average of 107 dB and a peak of 115 dB.
The EV system is remote-controlled and supervised from a single laptop in the stadium control room, all via EV's IRIS-Net software platform. The system's Auto Gain Control increases or decreases the sound levels consistent with changes in the level of ambient crowd noise.
All of EV's external speakers are manufactured to exceed the IP55 standard for weather resistance, while the system's speech intelligibility surpasses the approved standard of 0.55 RASTI.
For more information, please visit www.harman.com and www.electro-voice.com .
