Hardesty is no stranger to the unique challenges of special events that combine live performance and worldwide broadcast: he has worked on the Super Bowl as well as previous Olympics. A pioneer in the use of digital audio distribution for special events, Hardesty was among the first sound designers to distribute audio in digital rather than analogue format, using CobraNet. This year, Hardesty switched to EtherSound to realize his sound design and audio concept for the event.
The audio system Hardesty designed for the Turin Opening and Closing Ceremonies is one of the most complex ever employed for an Olympic Games. In addition to the broadcast feeds, the live audience occupies a full 360 degrees of stadium seating along with a heart-shaped VIP area on the playing field. Within that area is a separate "mosh pit" for the athletes. Each audience area had different sound reinforcement, audio program and monitoring requirements. Managing the complex project kept both Hardesty and his partner Rob Hunt busy throughout the weeks leading up to the Opening Ceremonies, with still more time devoted during the Games themselves to fine-tuning and adjustments for the gala Closing Ceremonies.
Hardesty's main speaker system is the unusual high definition line array he designed for official sponsor Panasonic, which was first used for Athens Olympics competition venues in the summer of 2004, and is back in action at many Torino sites. For the playing field, Hardesty used MILO and MICA line arrays from Meyer Sound, chosen for their high quality and high SPL, combined with self-powered capability and compact size. To provide the 300° of coverage required for the 6000 VIPs seated on the playing field, Hardesty used the line arrays in multiple zones, supplemented with 700 HP subwoofers hidden in the stage structure. The traditional Parade of Nations, which took place early in the ceremonies, grouped the Olympic athletes in a "mosh pit" in the centre of the VIP area. Three-box Meyer Sound MILO line arrays left and right of the stage tower structure covered this area, with three delay zones hidden in the stage structure. These also served as key monitors for the VIP speeches delivered from the athletes' area, such as Yoko Ono's address.
With so many sound sources and playback locations spread out over a wide area, the Torino Olympic audio network had to be extremely robust and reliable. Hardesty's design uses a 1 Gigabit fibre-optic backbone, with eight distribution zones supported by 1 Gigabit and 100 Megabit Cat 5e cable. Data traffic and network redundancy are managed by DLink Ethernet switches and transceivers using the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). PCM digital audio data is transmitted across the network via EtherSound-enabled devices from Digigram. 15 ES881 8-channel AES/EBU digital-input EtherSound interfaces are used to transmit the source material onto the network and extract it as needed for broadcast or live sound reinforcement, along with six 8-channel analog-input ES8in Ethernet Audio Bridges and eight analog-output ES8out Ethernet Audio Bridges. A pair of two-channel ES220-L EtherSound network interfaces, user-switchable as analog inputs or outputs, are also used. Agora supplied all the equipment and Hardesty's partner Daniele Tramontani did the detail audio network design and management for the EtherSound network with the technical support of Prase Engineering.
(Lee Baldock)
