Winter Olympics Sound Designer Praises DiGiCo Consoles

The initial global multi-sport party to be held as scheduled because the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, organizers of the remarkably predicted 2022 Wintertime Olympics in Beijing, China promised to provide a “simple, secure and wonderful” event, flanked by spectacular opening and closing ceremonies. Renowned director and producer Zhang Yimou, together with chief audio designer He Biao, once again partnered to produce an unforgettable audio-visual feast viewed by the world and shipped by DiGiCo’s flagship Quantum7 mixing consoles.

Staged in Beijing’s 91,000 potential “Bird’s Nest” Nationwide Stadium, the wide and intricately choreographed events featured an elaborate lights, phase and monitor method underpinned by a continuous movement of songs, with a full of 18 audio scenes for the opening ceremony and 30 for the closing ceremony.

Mr. He managed the whole system of the audio challenge, from writing the creative programming and seem technique style, by means of to set up, great tuning, rehearsal and the reside functions. A stalwart DiGiCo consumer, Mr. He viewed as a variety of method mixtures, but the ultimate decision of mixing console was the DiGiCo Quantum7.

The audio set up was devised with one particular working procedure and a secondary redundant process for safeguarding. Therefore, the technique comprised two Quantum7 consoles with an accompanying pair of SD-Racks. Specified the extent of the stadium internet site, a community of MADI routers was utilised for lengthy-length signal transmission and backup, with the overall method framework supported and working on a bi-directional fiber-optic loop.

“The most vital issue in the style and design transient was to supply entire manage of the procedure and many backup possibilities to cater for any method failures during the in depth dwell gatherings, and the Quantum7 entirely fulfilled that transient,” explains Mr. He. “Its dual-engine architecture offers mirror functionality, giving a seamless backup involving the two engines, and with a second, backup console put in, I could maximize the technique protection. The fiber-optic was recognized in loop and star procedure configuration so both consoles could share inputs from the racks, which signifies that in the event of a malfunction, if any portion of the loop fails, all the principal and backup audio resources are linked to the principal and backup interface racks, and the process can carry on to perform properly and stably.”

Other than backup solutions, Mr. He’s best challenge for the function was controlling Beijing’s wintertime weather situations.

“Winter in Beijing is windy and snowy, and the temperature can achieve as small as minus 20 degrees centigrade. The Nationwide Stadium is an open up-air venue, which indicates the significant climate and outdoor ecosystem can be problematic, tests the seem reinforcement devices to its limitations. To guarantee economical procedure of the machines, the staff set up an insulation get rid of for the gear racks, and applied IOT technology for real-time monitoring of temperature and humidity,” claims Mr. He.

At the request of the Olympic Broadcasting Service Business (OBS), the new music for the events was formatted for 2. stereo and 5.1.4 multi-channel encompass audio to guarantee sleek transmission for broadcast. Playback was presented by QLAB computer software, which, along with all the other audio sources associated in the situations, was fed from the consoles and racks to MADI backup routers and, from there, transmitted to the OBS’s OB platform and the handle home. To cut down latency, the regulate home used two sampling rate converters to get a stable clock synchronization sign.

“I’m delighted to report that both equally dwell gatherings ran with out incident, which is an incredible accomplishment offered each individual event lasted several hours, with hundreds of individuals involved, and various scenes and AV spectacles to provide. The Quantum7 consoles were being the core of the audio system effective and functional, easy and easy, secure and stable, they epitomize the supreme mixer,” Mr. He concludes.