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Junior Eurovision in Minsk Uses Innovason Mixing Systems

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MINSK, Belarus – The eight Junior Eurovision Song Contest, held Nov. 20, 2010 in the Minsk Arena, hosted contestants aged 10-15 from 14 different countries, all performing before a live audience of 15,000 and some 40 million viewers in 15 European countries.
For FOH, monitors and audio distribution to the OB trucks, the production crews used four Innovason digital audio mixing systems. A Lawo MC66 console was used for the broadcast mixing. Audio suppliers included Sweden-based Electrosound for the arena sound system and Innovason network, and HD Resources, also based in Sweden, for the broadcast portion of the audio system.

 

Electrosound's Brollan Soderstrom, who designed the system and also mixed the show at FOH, took no chances. "The entire system is fully redundant – we literally had two of everything, except for the performers themselves!"

 

The gear list included two Innovason DioCore systems (EtherSound-enabled stageboxes) for the PA network and for audio distribution to the OB trucks via two Innovason DioESMadi converters; two Eclipse consoles for FOH mixing; two Sy80s for monitor mixing; and two OB trucks. The twin systems were running in parallel with the snapshots from each console synchronized via MIDI.

 

"After all the rehearsals and soundchecks, we copied the show files from the main system to the backup so that both systems would sound exactly the same," noted Soderstrom. "A MIDI command from the main consoles changed the pages on the back-up consoles in real time, so that in the event we had to go to backup, all we had to do was open the master mute on the backup and the show was right there, exactly as it would have been on the main desk."

 

Soderstrom also ensured that there were several signal cross paths between the main and the backup system in order to be able switch parts of the system over to the back-up system if necessary without disturbing the rest of the network.

 

"We set things up so that each transition would be totally seamless and transparent, and just a single click away," he noted. As it turned out, the backup system wasn't used, but, as Soderstrom noted, "it's good to know they're there." The show, he added, "was a huge success."

 

The winner: Vladimir Arzumanyan from Armenia, who won by just a single point.

 

Sound crew:

Broadcast Mix A-Sound: Fredrik Martinsson

Broadcast Mic Asst. B-Sound: Lars Johansson

Broadcast Mic Asst. B-Sound: Ricky Baron

PA Sound & System Design: Brollan Soderstrom

Monitor sound: Ajax Olsson

 

For more information, please visit www.innovason.com.