June 2013
www.tvbeurope.com
A TV audience of around 125 million experienced songs in optimum quality
Livefrom Malmö
OBs don’t get much bigger than Eurovision. Jake Young travelled to Sweden to take a look at the infrastructure behind the Song Contest, on-site with technical partner Sennheiser
IT WAS the fifth time Sweden hosted the Eurovision Song Contest, and although host broadcaster SVT tried to cut costs (the budget in Malmö was a quarter of that in Baku) it still required 95 transport trucks (25 stage only), three weeks for rigging and a 250-strong show crew. The 2013 Eurovision Song Contest marked the show’s 58th year, making it one of the longest running and most technologically advanced television programmes in the world. When TVBEurope toured the finished backstage on the afternoon of the Jury Final, Jonas Næsby, service/application engineer at Sennheiser Nordic, was present to provide his expertise in operating the RF equipment, including Sennheiser Digital 9000 systems — which made their Eurovision Song Contest debut. “If we’re talking RF, the
microphones and in-ears need to cover the satellite stage and the main stage,” he said. “We also supply in-ear feeds for a lot of the crew. The Steadicams run around with in-ear packs because it sounds so much better than a Motorola radio.” Under the stage was the main
RF wall, where all the receivers and in-ear controls were located. Antennas were placed stage left and stage right, split into three different frequency ranges. “When you connect an antenna to a Digital 9000 it will automatically calibrate itself,” explained Næsby. “When you then scan with the
9000 receiver it switches through a number of filter banks inside the antennas, so we can select what kind of frequency range we want to operate. We then split it into three different ranges to handle the channel count that we need for this production.” PFL was carried out on all
microphones before they went onstage, so a defective microphone could be replaced with a backup. “It goes out through the split system so that no one in the OB truck or the front of house has to reconfigure anything to change their presets,” said Næsby. But what is the main advantage
of the Digital 9000 system? “As RF drops we still have perfect sound quality going through the system. We can see the RF level we’re receiving and we can also monitor the quality of the signal we’re recieving. Another advantage is that we are running
on lithium-ion batteries. We get battery status in hours and minutes, which is very convenient.” In total around 140 channels
were coordinated for in-ears; all the microphones used in the arena and microphones used in the green room, Press Centre and ENG crews.
Transmission quality To provide the specified 96- channel wireless microphone system, Sennheiser worked closely together with the Berlin-based rental company MM Communications, which is experienced in the ESC and which owns a large contingent of Digital 9000 systems. The wireless monitoring systems from the 2000 series – a total of 40 transmitters and around 160 receivers – also came from Berlin, as well as another eight wireless systems that were used for broadcasting from the Press Centre. Owner Markus Müller said: “The quality of the new Sennheiser systems is just incredible! Digital 9000 is linear in operation – the transmission quality is as good as in a wired system. As far as I know, the system is currently the only digital
l 23 cameras to capture the action from all angles
l Three Midas XL8 and two Midas Pro9 audio consoles
l 210 speakers — Nexo Geo T and L-Acoustics dV-dosc
l All speakers managed through LAB LM 44 & LM 26
l 48 hand and headmics, all Sennheiser 9000 Series
l 16 In-Ears with 100 receivers, Sennheiser 2000 IEM
l Two MacBook Pro machines running Waves plug-ins
l Two MacBook Pro machines running Cubase
wireless solution worldwide that transmits audio signals without any sound losses.” Technical Partners included
Barco (projection), MA Lighting (lighting control), Clay Paky, SGM and Company NA (lighting
TVBEurope 13 The Workflow
The winning entry from Denmark:
Emmelie de Forest with Digital 9000
Stage set-up at Malmö 2013
l Four operators for PA and monitor
l 20 sound engineers to run the show
l 28 Barco HDQ 40 projectors l Two Barco HDF W26 projectors l Four Barco FLM HD20 projectors l Four Barco FLM R22+ projectors l Eight Barco SLM R12 projectors l One Barco Encore Image processing system
l 14 Green Hippo Hippotizer Media Servers
l 350sqm 3D video mapping surface as a backdrop
l Two multi camera directors
fixtures), Wireless Solution Sweden (wireless DMX control systems), Sennheiser (microphones & personal monitoring), Green Hippo (media servers) and CAST (which provided its BlackTrax system).
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Photo: Ralph Larmann
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