DELHI, India – Production crews navigated inconsistent power, organization issues, Dengue fever and other challenges to stage the ceremonies marking the first Commonwealth Games to be held in India.
Along with its own audio gear, Australia-based Norwest Productions crew members made sure they had plenty of disinfectant hand wash, mosquito repellant, sunscreen and chicken wire (no, not for feral chickens. More on that later.)
Since cutting their teeth on the Sydney Olympic Games Ceremonies a decade ago, Norwest has dealt with the audio requirements of other large scale stadium shows, including two of the three Summer Olympics, both Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games in Doha. This year they also did the Vancouver Winter Olympics and Singapore Youth Olympics.
Even so, there were no shortage of challenges posed by the Delhi Games for Norwest's crew, most of whom came straight from the Singapore Youth Olympics. The company teamed with Mumbai-based sound production company Sound.com to supply the entire audio package and crew in Delhi.
"The main hurdles in Delhi were organizational, resulting in difficulty getting things done or decided by the Olympic Committee in a timely manner," noted Chris Kennedy, managing director of Norwest. "This also applied to payments, which were slow and a cause for tension. The rest was surprisingly benign once we accepted that many things were not going to resemble how it is done in a first world country."
Upon arrival, Norwest's project manager Andrew Rodd discovered the renovated Jawaharlal Nehru stadium was nowhere near completion, having no main power, no control booths or spaces, and the field of play was having serious water drainage issues. Consequently, load-in was delayed by a whole two weeks on what was already a fairly tight schedule.
Ten days out from the opening, two of Sound.com's key personnel, including their network engineer for the amplifiers, were struck down with Dengue fever, and Norwest had to hastily fly extra crew members out from Australia.
"The paperwork involved in getting someone into India hastily is expensive and frustrating as India is an incredibly bureaucratic nation," said Andrew. "In fact getting anything done was a nightmare from the bureaucratic point of view. Getting into the stadium every day was a continual problem as they had four different types of security none of which knew what the others were doing, and their rules changed daily. One day we weren't allowed access to the field of play and were bailed up by soldiers with rifles."
Power proved to be an ongoing problem for all of the technical crews at the venue. One night the generators were abruptly switched off with no warning and anything that wasn't protected suffered. Consequently the lighting crew lost 170 lighting fixtures. According to Andrew, all of the difficulties bought the contractors closer together resulting in great camaraderie.
"We had to look after ourselves, as no one else there was," he said. "There was a lot of ‘one hand not talking to the other' and that made it a very difficult show."
Scott Willsallen of Auditoria was contracted to design and manage the audio system for both the opening and closing ceremonies. Scott's design used over 200 loudspeakers, a 10-node Optocore digital audio network, over 100 power amplifiers and a dual redundant digital audio mixing and control system. The design allowed for flexibility to meet the continuously changing requirements of both Ceremonies.
The 10-node Optocore system picked up and delivered audio to and from seven locations around the field of play. The main FOH mix console, a 96-channel Yamaha PM1D system, and main monitor console, a 96-channel Soundcraft Vi6, were both connected digitally to the Optocore network. The broadcaster had access to all inputs and some sub-mixes from the FOH console at the Optocore node provided to them.
Each Crown HD amplifier was connected via AES from the Optocore network. Optocore X6 converters were used throughout the system, which meant that an input would be converted to digital once mixed and sent back to the processors in the Crown HD amps all in the digital realm. Audio replay was also provided by Norwest in the form of a matching pair of Merging Technology Pyramix Mass Core DAWs that delivered all show audio to the Optocore network via MADI. In total, around 2000 meters of fiber connected all Optocore nodes.
The backup system consisted of identical mixing systems – another Yamaha PM1D for FOH and Soundcraft Vi6 for monitors – and were fed the same inputs via analog. Nearly 2,700 meters of 25 pair cable, 12 XTA DS800s, 56 channels of Creative Audio line drive and around 72 isolation transformers made up the analog network. The backup system fed all Crown HD amps via analog so that switching from one system to the other was achieved in a single button press.
A gigabit Ethernet network was used to control all 112 Crown amplifiers, Shure UHF-R series radio microphone receivers, and to monitor remote UPS status as well as deliver Internet, printing and server access among the crew. It was made up of eight HP 2610 and four HP 1700 switches. All amplifiers were monitored constantly via Harman's System Architect software.
"Harman were very helpful and delivered custom control pages that gave one page system overview and the all important main system / backup system change over button – by telling all amplifiers to use the digital or analog input," said Ian Cooper, System Engineer.
Twenty-five distributed JBL VerTec arrays lined the stadium. On the field of play, 25 JBL SRX712M speakers were used for the performers' monitor system. Thirty-two 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 used for musical performances.
The radio mic setup consisted of four separate receiver locations, with up to six channels of RX at each, plus a fifth location at FOH running 10 channels of receive. Each of the four field-of-play receiver positions was allocated tasks for different parts of the ceremonies.
"This gave us more localized RF coverage, plus a good amount of redundancy, at the same time it allowed lower gain structures in these receivers, in turn making them more immune to external RF interference," said Steve Caldwell, RF & Technical Manager. "The Front of House receiver setup was designed to cover the entire field of play as a backup, and therefore had a much higher gain structure."
Shure was the brand of choice for all radio microphone transmitters and receivers. Custom Norwest-built antenna systems, preamplifiers and distribution was used on the front of house receivers in order to get the performance required, and all antennas on the field of play were custom-built weatherproof units. All receivers were controlled and monitored from the control rooms.
PM systems consisted of 10 sends of Sennheiser IEM, combined and amplified through custom Norwest in-house amplification. High performance log-periodic antennas were used to broadcast to the field of play. Coverage of the IEM system was flawless and included back of house and performer dressing rooms. All IEM system transmitter field strength was monitored from the control rooms.
"All spectrum management was done by me for both the opening and closing ceremonies, and no issues were experienced during the weeks of use," added Caldwell. "There was, however, a moment of ‘breath holding' when the Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh's motorcade made use of an RF spectrum jammer in order to prevent radio operated devices being triggered while the dignitaries were entering the building just moments before the Opening Ceremony. This had the effect of completely rendering useless all the two-way comms in the venue, the TETRA GSM communications, all our radio microphones and most of our IEM sends. Luckily it was a relatively short-lived exposure to this device, a rather old, but effective Israeli made Lymtech. The device made a return during the closing ceremony, for which we were well prepared, thanks to the warnings from a spectrum analyser."
And the chicken wire? Well, that didn't have an audio function per se, but rather a protective one. The stadium had a very active population of rats, who shortly after the gear was deployed developed a taste for the plastic covering on the fiber optic cables inside the node racks – especially the node in the tunnel under the field of play. Four meters of chicken wire was used to wrap the rack containing the gear to prevent the entry of the rats.
"It went extraordinarily well on both nights with very little obvious going wrong, and it all looking and sounding good," concluded Chris Kennedy. "It worked out amazingly well in the circumstances and is another ‘feather in the cap' for Norwest and its very capable and experienced ‘Ceremonies Team.'"
For Norwest Productions
Ian Shapcott – FOH Engineer
Ian Cooper – System Engineer
Trevor Beck – Replay Engineer
Steve Caldwell – RF & Technical manager
Matt Whitehead – System Technician
Katie Pugsley – IEM Manager
Josh Finlayson – Audio Technician
Andrew Rodd – Project Manager
For Sound.com
Warren D'Souza – Production Manager
Sunil Karanjikar – System technician
Gilroy Valladares – System technician
Yusuf Shaikh – System technician
Yash Panchal – IEM & RF Distribution Assistant
12 additional support staff
Control
2 PM1D96 mixing systems
2 Pyramix 4.1 DAW Replay systems
2 Mackie 24/96 Hard drives HDR/MDR
1 TC System 6000
3 Emperical Labs EL8
3 XTA SIDD
2 Yamaha O1V/96
2 System 360 Instant Replay
18 Alpermann & Velte Time code readers
2 Apogee Big Ben
3 AB100 Announce stations
3 Rode NT2000
4 Schoep microphone systems CMC6 / MK4
2 Rode Custom dual capsule podium microphones
2 Soundcraft Vi6 mixing systems. (not used)
12 Yamaha MSP3 monitors
Radio Systems
16 Shure UR4D dual receivers
3 Shure UA845WB
24 UR1 body pack transmitters
16 UR2 hand held microphone transmitters
1 Norwest Custom 8way redundant antenna distribution system
6 Norwest Custom weatherproof Log-Periodic antennas
2 Shure UA860
6 Shure UA870WB
20 Shure WL184/185 lavalier
13 Countryman E6 headsets
10 Sennheiser G2 SR300 IEM transmitters
32 Sennheiser G2 EK300 IEM receivers
3 Norwest Custom redundant Wideband IEM amplifiers
2 Norwest Custom log periodic directional Arrays
10 Shure SCL5 IEM earphones
50 SE115 IEM earphones
2 WinRadio analyser system
1 Plotting RF spectrum analyser
Signal Distribution
9-Node OptoCore fiber optic network
1 DD4ME
1 DD2FE
10 DD32E
5 X6/16IN
8 X6/16OUT
5 X6/16I/O
6 Dolby LP4D12 / LP8D8
3 Lake Contour
3 Lake MESA
12 XTA DS800 active mic/line splitters
7 LD606 isolated line drivers
Speaker & Amplifier System
24 JBL VRX915M stage monitors
25 JBL SRX712M
75 JBL VT4880/4880A
75 JBL VT4888/4889
75 Crown IT12000HD
12 Crown IT6000
4 Lab Gruppen 10000Q
6 NEXO PS8
25 Quest MS801 100v Line speakers
2.5km multi mode optical fiber
5km analog signal cable
Ceremony photos courtesy of M&M Production Management
