French national broadcaster Radio France was behind the entire audio affair, including sound reinforcement. Sound designer Frederic Viricel's ambitious concept involved a mic'd up orchestra and two choirs at the centre of the pitch, with roving vocal soloists on radio mics. The tender was won by Canadian speaker manufacturer Adamson's independent support company in France, DV2.
Spearheaded by DV2's Didier dal Fitto, the practical solution was to feed the programme to a series of small, groundstacked line arrays evenly spaced around the touchline. Uniquely, further enhancement was piped to the stadium's permanently installed 100V line system. Two FOH sound engineers, Laurent Fracchia and Benjamin Perru, divided digital mix duties between them on an InnovaSON Sensory Large Scale console and the new InnovaSON Sy80 respectively. Their vantage point, providing as close as possible to a stereo image, was the sports commentary position.
The stereo image was confined to spatial effects such as reverb, with the orchestral and choral mixes in mono. This programme created a de facto LCR reading - effectively alternating with an 'RCL' image - for eight pairs of Adamson Axis Y-10 stacks, with every stack based on a Y-10 sub. The 100V line system, mounted on railings around three tiers of the stadium, received only sound effects and the vocal soloists - adding crucial proximity and intimacy in such a huge setting.
While a wireless measurement mic system, used for EQ and time alignment, was created specially for the event by Sennheiser to reduce excess cabling, further wiring economies were achieved by a baptism for Digigram's new Ethersound units ES8in and ES8out. These created a Cat 5-based network for flexible distribution of eight separate channels of audio programme to both loudspeaker systems, with a total latency of just 125 microseconds. All devices were daisy-chained, further reducing cable and installation costs, while a control computer located close to the front-of-house console provided monitoring data for the entire installation.
It was all worth it: in a stadium with a capacity of 80,000, 71,000 turned up to see - and hear - Bizet's classic.
Phil Ward
