REPORT 043
Company: L-Acoustics Location: London, UK
Once L-Acoustics was selected as the brand of choice for the sound system at the Olympic Stadium for the Olympics and Paralympics at London 2012, the collective team faced a gargantuan task. Scott Willsallen Audio Systems Designer at London 2012 Ceremonies Limited, who was responsible for the design and implementation of the technology at the Olympic Stadium said: “I’ve never put that much power in the air with a sound system before.” As far as L-Acoustics is aware, no one has ever assembled together so many amplifiers to one network before either.” The total inventory comprised 220 L-Acoustics V-Dosc line sources cabinets, plus 51 L-Acoustics Arcs II downfill cabinets spread out across 22 arrays, suspended from a custom tension ring made especially for the event. An additional two arrays were suspended from the roof with six L-Acoustics Kudo in each. On the ground, a further 88 L-Acoustics SB28 subwoofers and 88 L-Acoustics Kudo loudspeakers provided additional sound reinforcement for the opening and closing ceremonies. The equipment was supplied by Delta Sound, Norwest Productions, Autograph and Britannia Row Productions. Scott continued: “It was clear to Bobby Aitken, Ceremonies Sound Designer and I from the outset that London 2012 Olympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies would feature some of the world’s greatest musical talent. Both ceremonies relied heavily on the soundtrack to engage the audience and drive the excitement. The design had to exceed the expectations of the musical directors, performers, live audience and the world’s media.” To achieve a consistent listening experience throughout the upper bowl each array required 10 L-Acoustics V-Dosc elements. At over 4.5-metres long, this quantity of V-Dosc also provided the line array length required for useful low frequency pattern control. The vertical consistency was duplicated at all array positions around the stadium. Selecting a total of 22 arrays allowed the best balance between providing a stereo listening environment and avoiding too much overlap and damaging intel-
ligibility. The 22 L-Acoustics arrays also worked with the geometry of the tension ring system. While the L-Acoustics V-Dosc arrays provided excellent coverage for the upper bowl and for the upper and middle bowl on the west, the flown arrays required extending to provide lower bowl coverage. Conveniently, at approximately the same time L-Acoustics launched the Arcs II constant curvature line source, both had the power that was needed and provided the coverage required with only a pair of cabinets. The addition of a pair of Arcs II cabinets to the flown systems provided excellent downfill coverage for the entire lower bowl. The placement of the amplifiers was loosely based around the network node layout, but the most important factors were minimising the speaker cable lengths whilst ensuring weather protection of the amplifier racks. Ultimately all speaker cable lengths for the flown arrays were 50-metres and all amplifiers were well protected. The signal transport and data backbone of the system is based on a four-core op- tical fibre ring. Two cores are used for a closed loop Optocore network for all audio signal transport throughout the system. The second pair of fibres connected to managed gigabit network switches. This network is referred to as the Audio LAN. The Audio LAN is managed into four VLAN’s, one of which is for the LA Network. With over 200 L-Acoustics LA8 amplifiers on the network planning and pre-pro- gramming of IP addresses was very important. Each flown array used six L-Acous- tics LA8 amplifiers, five for the L-Acoustics V-Dosc and one for the L-Acoustics Arcs II; each FOP array used three L-Acoustics LA8 amplifiers, two for the L-Acoustics Kudo and one for the L-Acoustics SB28’s, so each array needed nine IP addresses.
www.l-acoustics.com
Company: Clear-Com Location: London, UK
When it comes to organising large-scale live events for the public, Delta Sound knows exactly what to do. One outstanding example of this was the 2012 London Olympics, which took place in Delta Sound’s own backyard, London and as events go, they don’t get any bigger than the Olympics. Delta Sound’s Delta Comms division was put in charge of communications between everyone from producers and announcers to sports secretaries and venue managers for all the London 2012 Olympics sporting events. This required the Delta Comms team to prepare more than 38 venues for communications. Included among these were the brand-new Olympic Stadium in Stratford and the temporary stadium erected at Horse Guards Parade in Westminster. The Delta Comms team was also responsible for Olympic venues outside of the city, such as Box Hill in Surrey and Eton Dorney. One of the main venues to be outfitted by Delta Comms for the games was the Excel Arena in London’s Royal Victoria Dockland. Organisers divided the cavernous arena into five separate venues, which hosted a variety of sporting events such as boxing, judo, fencing and table tennis, simultaneously. Consequently, the communications
systems for each venue had to be altered and adapted whenever the sporting event changed - a tricky undertaking. Delta Comms Engineer Matt Deal was on hand at the arena, facilitating the various systems. To meet these communications challenges, Delta Comms supplied and implemented a Clear-Com Eclipse-PiCo matrix intercom in each of the aforementioned five venues. It also integrated the Clear-Com HelixNet Partyline system, along with Motorola radio systems, to en- sure easy, reliable communication between the production teams. “Both the Clear-Com Eclipse matrix and the new HelixNet Partyline systems were fantastic,” said Phil Kidd, Delta Comms Manager. “In other areas, we also implemented the Clear-Com Eclipse, with its IVC-32 card, which allowed matrix panels to be connected via IP. The flexibility of the Clear-Com setup enabled Delta Sound to optimally deploy intercoms around a large site such as the Olympics more efficiently and with fewer resources than traditional systems.”
www.clearcom.com www.mondodr.com
Photos by Scott Willsallen
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