This year alone they have done the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Singapore Youth Olympics and now the Commonwealth Games Delhi. "The worldwide event fraternity knows that Norwest are not only easy and fun to work with, they ensure that nothing goes wrong and that nothing is a problem for them," says the company.
For the Commonweath Games, Norwest teamed with a regional, Mumbai-based sound production company Sound.com to supply the entire audio package and crew. Most of the Norwest crew came straight to Delhi from the Singapore Youth Olympics.
"The main hurdles in Delhi were organisational resulting in difficulty getting things done or decided by the Olympic Committee in a timely manner," remarked Chris Kennedy, managing director of Norwest. "This also applied to payments which were slow and a cause for tension. The rest was surprisingly benign once we accepted that many things were not going to resemble how it is done in a first world country!"
Upon arrival, Norwest's project manager Andrew Rodd discovered the renovated Jawaharlal Nehru stadium was nowhere near completion having no main power, no control booths or spaces, and the field of play was having serious water drainage issues. Power proved to be an ongoing problem for all of the technical crews at the venue. One night the generators were abruptly switched off with no warning and anything that wasn't protected suffered. Consequently the lighting crew lost 170 lighting fixtures. According to Andrew, all of the difficulties bought the contractors closer together resulting in great camaraderie.
Scott Willsallen of Auditoria was contracted to design and manage the audio system for both the opening and closing ceremonies. Scott's design utilised over 200 loudspeakers, a ten node Optocore digital audio network, over 100 power amplifiers and a dual redundant digital audio mixing and control system. The design allowed for flexibility to meet the continuously changing requirements of both Ceremonies.
The ten node Optocore system picked up and delivered audio to and from seven locations around the field of play. The main FOH mix console, a 96ch Yamaha PM1d system and main monitor console, a 96ch Soundcraft Vi6 were both connected digitally to the Optocore network. The broadcaster had access to all inputs and some sub-mixes from the FOH console at the Optocore node provided to them.
Each Crown HD amplifier was connected via AES from the Optocore network. Optocore X6 converters were used throughout the system which meant that an input would be converted to digital once mixed and sent back to the processors in the Crown HD amps all in the digital realm. Audio replay was also provided by Norwest in the form of a matching pair of Merging Technology Pyramix Mass Core DAWs that delivered all show audio to the Optocore network via Madi. In total around 2000m of fibre connected all Optocore nodes.
The back-up system consisted of identical mixing systems - another Yamaha PM1D for FOH and Soundcraft Vi6 for monitors - and was fed the same inputs via analogue. All amplifiers were monitored constantly via Harman's System Architect software.
25 distributed JBL Vertec arrays lined the stadium whilst on the field of play, 25 JBL SRX712M speakers were used for the performers' monitor system. 32 JBL CBT70J column speakers and JBL SRX718S subwoofers were used to ensure that athletes on the field could experience the event's sound. On the main stage, JBL VRX915M monitor wedges were utilized for musical performances.
The radio mic setup cons
