Simulcast Audio Solutions for 40,000 Attendees in Three Arenas in Two States
Since they began in 1997, the Passion Conferences have long served to bring college students together for worship with a lineup of concerts and speakers. Over the years, they have expanded, with events and tours around the U.S. and the entire world. This year, with the promise that “three locations will be connected across two cities with a single heartbeat,” the conference was held simultaneously at three large venues in two different cities, all linked together to share content via an Optocore digital fiber network and satellite redundancy. The three-day conference saw attendance at more then 40,000 people, with six bands and six guest speakers to entertain the crowds in all three cities.
Pastors Brad Jones, at Philips Arena in downtown Atlanta — with Clay Scroggins, at Infinite Energy Arena (Gwinnett County, GA) and Ben Stuart, at Houston’s Toyota Center — led the events. During the three-day period, pastor Louie Giglio, Passion Conference’s founder, and musicians including Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Crowder, Kristian Stanfill, Hillsong United and Rend Collective, moved from one location to the next, providing the same experience for every attendee, regardless of the venue. In addition to audio and video presentations synchronized over inter-city fiber networks, all were webcast worldwide.
Production for the event was managed by Black & White Live, with Rat Sound (of Camarillo, CA) providing all audio systems and audio design, headed up by Matt Manix from Nashville-based Method Production Group.
With the same lineup of musicians performing at each arena, Rat Sound supplied the same complement of DiGiCo consoles (nine Optocore-networked SD7 mixers across three different venues), with DiGiGrid servers at FOH and monitors plus identical control, wired/wireless microphone and IEM packages at each of the three locations. Working for the third time on the design and implementation of production sound for the annual Passion Conference, Rat Sound also provided virtually identical L-Acoustics K1/K2 PA system packages, scaled appropriately for each venue.
Philips Arena acted as the hub of an 800-mile-plus fiber network between the three venues, allowing the pastors to converse and interact with each other via DPA headsets and I-Mag video screens. A DiGiCo SD-Mini Rack located in the outside broadcast production truck and supplied to each venue by TNDV of Nashville enabled operators to switch broadcast or FOH audio with the live video of speakers and musicians being transmitted between locations. Each OB truck’s SD-Mini Rack was looped through a DD4 fiber-to-MADI converter feeding the Riedel MediorNet-enabled HD-SDI link, incorporating 16 channels of embedded audio between the venues.
In the Mix
Matt Manix of Method Production Group designed and coordinated the audio networks within and linking each venue, and selected the DiGiCo SD7 platform for its power, flexibility and audio quality. “Having shared I/O and being able to have clean audio at every position without utilizing analog splitters, we were able to get the channel count up really high and retain the quality. The SD7 has to have one of the largest output bus counts out there and is arguably the most flexible system, as far as routing anything anywhere. And with the SD7’s A and B engine, we didn’t have to rent extra desks or engines for redundancy,” Manix says.
Each arena was equipped with an SD7 at FOH and at monitors, with a third SD7 located at a backstage broadcast position where the web feed was mixed. An Optocore network, with fiber running to each console from one of four interconnected DiGiCo SD-Racks positioned at monitor world and back to an adjacent SD-Rack, providing redundancy through the closed-loop configuration. Monitor engineers had head amp control of two of the SD-Racks while the broadcast engineers controlled the two SD-Racks linking two other consoles — specified by one of the bands — into the Optocore network.
The SD7s’ input capacity and output busing capabilities ensured redundancy throughout the systems, as Manix details: “Each broadcast desk sent a mix-minus to the other two venues which were picked up by front of house, broadcast and monitors. We also sent the FOH program feed to each venue as a backup to the broadcast mix and mix-minus. Additionally, each DiGiCo desk at each venue had access to all embedded audio from all venues.” Further, Manix says, isolated feeds from every presenter were shared between all locations, enabling the engineers to process them specifically for each venue.
P.A. Punch
The two Georgia venues were configured in the round, with Houston presenting in an end-stage layout. Rat Sound’s key P.A. tech, Andrew Gilchrist, designed the L-Acoustics systems at all three venues. Philips Arena included eight hangs comprising a total of 41 L-Acoustics K1 and 60 K2 cabinets, Infinite Energy Center included six hangs of 18 K1 and 59 K2 boxes, and at Toyota Center there were four hangs of 28 K1 and 44 K2. Each rig also featured eight ARCS and 12 Kara plus two-dozen SB28 subs.
In the two Georgia venues, the amplification was positioned on the bumpers of the arrays — 26 LA-RAKs in Atlanta and 22 in Gwinnett. “We took drive lines from front-of-house up to the catwalk using Riedel RockNet. That distributed out over AES, with an analog backup, to every hang. The power distribution was up there as well,” says Rat Sound audio engineer Tom Worley. In Houston, 18 LA-RAKs were distributed on the floor at stage left and right.
Complications: Solved!
The Infinite Energy Center and Philips Arena are both in the Atlanta area and only 26 miles apart, yet with Houston’s Toyota Center more than 800 miles away, most types of connections were made impractical given the issues of distance, latency or signal degradation. To accomplish this, Manix designed the massive audio system, which would be the same at each arena, and chose to utilize a fiber interconnect to transport audio and video between all three locations. An Optocore DD4MR-FX in each arena was used to feed 16 channels of MADI to the fiber uplink and to receive 32 channels, 16 from each venue. An additional 32 channels were available at the DD4MR-FX from a backup satellite connection (which was not actually needed during the three days of the show).
Manix comments, “With the speed and reliability of the fiber interconnect, we were able to have three bands playing at the same time, live streamed to the other arenas. The main band was at the Philips Arena, which was the network hub, while live vocals happened at the other two arenas. There was 50ms of latency between Atlanta and Houston because of the distance, but we were able to compensate for that, and it worked perfectly. The transmission was crystal clear.”
All R-series Optocore units can be interfaced with DiGiCo SD consoles and racks for analog, AES or MADI transport with direct control via the console, just as if the Optocore units were SD Racks. Optocore/DiGiCo integration allows for all the same features as a normal SD network: 504 audio inputs, unlimited outputs, 48 or 96 kHz sampling rates and up to 120 km between nodes on single-mode fiber.
The content shared between venues was a major part of the Conference, so there could be no signal loss in the fiber connection. Optocore’s three layers of redundancy ensured that content was always delivered because every Optocore piece has redundant power supplies, redundant network ports and redundant word clock generators.
“We had a backup DD4MR-FX at each venue just in case, but we never needed them,” says Jon Monson, Rat Sound’s tour system supervisor. “There was never even so much as a hiccup. The Optocore units did exactly what we needed them to do, and it was simple to integrate them into the network.”
Having a Few Extra “Hands”
Another challenge came from live-syncing the three venues together. Each site had its own host, and there were several moments when the three hosts were speaking back and forth to each other from stage. Each desk at each venue had a variety of audio inputs coming in from the other venues, including ISOs of hosts, talking heads and audience mics.
FOH engineer Stephen Bailey comments, “We were able to use Waves Dugan Automixer on all three of the host mics, which cleaned up their dialog channels tremendously. This also gave us extra control over how much audience level we could add independently from the other venues into our local P.A. or broadcast mix. The result sounded too good to be true. It brought massive energy in from the other locations, making it feel like we really were all part of one unified event.”
Each of the nine SD7 consoles also had two Waves SoundGrid Extreme or Waves Server One servers with Waves SD7 Pro Show bundles in addition to the Waves Dugan Automixer. “We also had a DiGiGrid MGB audio interface for each venue’s broadcast desk, with the capability of recording 128 channels for recording backups using Waves Tracks Live,” Baily recalls. “There were nine sound engineers, all using Waves plug-ins such as C6 Multiband Compressor, H-Reverb Hybrid Reverb, H-Delay Hybrid Delay, NLS Non-Linear Summer and the SSL E-Channel. Primary recordings were made in the video trucks. Secondary recording rigs were set up at the broadcast consoles using DiGiGrid MGB units with laptop computers running Waves Tracks Live, capable of pulling down 128 channels at 48k.”
Achieving Success
Despite all the details, logistical issues and the overall intricacies of the production, Passion 2016 was a total success, thanks to hard-working tech teams and the right application of available technology, that — to the attendees — make everything so seamless. Or as Bailey summed it up: “it’s really remarkable how a complex project like this can network easily, run smoothly, and — most importantly — give the audience a great experience.”
For more information on Passion events (including Passion 2017, slated for January 2 to 4, 2017), visit www.268generation.com.
