RANCHI, India – The Opening and Closing Ceremonies at India's 34th National Games 2011 involved 7,000 athletes from all of the nation's states and 45,000 people in the audience. Sound.com, which had also provided audio for the Commonwealth Games 2010 in Delhi, used Optocore gear for audio transport.
Core Networks and Cineyug Group coordinated the ceremonies, which included an air display, Indian musicians, Bollywood stars, a laser show, a fire dance and an appearance by Katrina Kaif. There was also a sub-event titled "Welcome, Kerala," the location of next year's event.
The audio was streamed to six nodes in the North, South, East, West, FOH and VIP zones of the stadium using Optocore X6R-FX and DD32R-FX digital interraces. While these were running on fiber, an X6R-TP was running on CAT5e, using Optocore's SANE protocol for the VIP area.
In total, Sound.com ran 2.2km of Multimode Tactical Fiber Optic Cable as well as 3.0km of Analog Multicore and Two Core Cables.
"Using the "R" series made a huge difference in signal transmission, speed and accuracy and was the foundation stone of our ability to provide audio at any part of the stadium," said Sound.com founder and managing director, Warren Dsouza. "We also ran the multi-mode tactical fiber optic cable in a ring topology, thus giving us redundancy if we lost a fiber cable."
Dsouza and his colleague Sunil Karanjikar visited Optocore headquarters in Munich for OCT training and certification, and after arriving, they decided upgrade their DD2FE to DD2FR-FX. In Ranchi this dual port optical MADI device interfaced with the Soundcraft VI6 FOH console. "This was probably the first DD2FR-FX MADI device out in the field," Dsouza said.
The JBL VerTec racks and stacks were powered by Crown and Lab.gruppen amplifiers – all receiving AES signals from the Optocore devices. Sound.com also fielded a monitor node rack consisting of the Vi6 stage rack receiving audio mic and line signals from the artists on stage. It also provided audio outputs to the amplifiers.
All the microphones were split to FOH, Monitors and Broadcast. Sound.com also had a 360 Systems Broadcast Instant Replay 2 on the console for all the quick cues required. The crew also made use of a souped-up custom rack-mountable PC computer with a MOTU Ultralite Mk3 Hybrid sound card for all the live acts. "We also had Lenovo Laptops running the entire show music as a backup," said Dsouza.
Meanwhile, careful wireless spectrum management allowed the service company to keep tabs on the spurious radio signals and government jammers during VIP movement.
"I am very proud at the way the Sound.com team members have executed this project – with veteran engineers like Sunil, Gilroy and Yusuf working in conjunction with rookies like Jason, Arvind and Dheeraj," Dsouza added. "They have pulled off a major audio production while the company was also busy handling other projects at the same time. The client most definitely was more than satisfied."
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