By Elina Shatkin, October 6, 2004
A network of 17 Lake Contour digital loudspeaker processors and Lake Mesa Quad EQ digital matrix processors played a critical role in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, held in Greece during August. The Lake Controller network was used to tune, integrate, and drive the EAW, Nexo, and McCauley front of house and monitor loudspeaker systems at the Olympic Stadium while also serving as the critical switching device between the digital primary and analog backup replay systems as well as distributing timecode to all the production teams.
Over 70,000 spectators were present in the Athens Olympic Stadium, with an estimated 4.5 billion people watching on television worldwide, when the Opening Ceremony on August 13 marked the return of the international sports event to its historical origin. The Opening and Closing Ceremonies, produced by experiential marketing company Jack Morton Worldwide in collaboration with artistic director Dimitris Papaioannou, featured a sound system specified by Australian audio designer Scott Willsallen working with Sydney-based Norwest Productions and local subcontractor Enttech
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The speaker systems, comprising flown clusters, under-balcony boxes, and ground-stacked elements on the field of play, as well as monitor speakers for performers and announcers, were tuned utilizing Lake Controller and Smaartlive Controller software running on a wireless tablet.
Consoles, replay systems, and wireless microphone receivers were all duplicated to provide fail-safe redundancy. The Lake Contour and Mesa Quad EQ units, robust enough for Willsallen to not even consider installing full backups, were all set up in Autoselect mode to receive the primary digital signal and automatically switch to the analog backup in the event that digital sync were lost.
A custom software switch provided by Lake Technology for the Olympic Stadium installation additionally offered manual control of the digital to analog changeover. Each Lake Contour and Mesa Quad EQ unit's digital offset function matched the gain difference between the two systems to ensure an inaudible transition. But the Opening and Closing Ceremonies ran smoothly and the backup systems were not used.
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