Sennheiser works on Eurovision 2013
Eurovision has quite the dedicated following in Australia, providing the perfect opportunity to poke some affectionate fun at our European neighbours. This year, the contestants relied on Sennheiser wireless microphones and in-ears for their 15 minutes of fame. Dimi Kyriakou reports.
On Europe’s night of nights, more than 100 million viewers can forget about the state of the economy in their respective countries and instead soak up the wonder that is the Eurovision Song Contest.
Sure, the songs are usually bad – and the lyrics often worse – but Eurovision has an innate ability to make up for all of that by providing hours of entertainment dipped in a little bit of culture. The audience is nothing short of ecstatic about it, and why wouldn’t they be? This is the show that gave us ABBA and Celine Dion!
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I’ll be the first to admit that, yes, I love Eurovision. It’s the one Sunday night in May every year where I can put my feet up and enjoy hours of time-delayed, glittery ridiculousness.
Given my background I’m always keen to see what Greece comes up with; usually I’m disappointed that it pales in comparison to our winning song of 2005. (That said, this year’s effort should be commended. I’m not sure when kilts became a part of Greek culture but it was a catchy tune, even if we did wonder if Alcohol Is Free because the bailout is paying for it…)
Which brings us to the 58th Eurovision Song Contest, where all eyes were fixed on Sweden and the host city, Malmo. Capturing the sounds and atmosphere of Eurovision on-stage and off is certainly challenging, yet the host broadcaster and production team managed to create a colourful festival of songs and unique performances that were successfully broadcast live to 44 countries.
As Syntec product manager (professional products division) James Waldron explains, Sennheiser Electronics was the official technical equipment provider of wireless microphones and in-ear monitoring solutions at the event.
“Sennheiser has been involved with Eurovision for many years and was a natural choice to be the supplier again this year. Their reputation for rock solid reliable reception and the best audio quality in the industry made it a natural and easy choice for the Eurovision organisers,” he says.
“The fact that Sennheiser has the only broadcast-quality fully digital wireless microphone system available also helped ensure that Eurovision could maintain its reputation for leading-edge technology.”
Having already proved its worth at the 2013 Logie Awards, 96 channels of the new Sennheiser D9000 wireless microphone system were supplied at Eurovision – the first time that a digital wireless microphone system was deployed on a show of this size and complexity.
In addition to this, 40 channels of 2000 Series in-ear monitor transmitters were deployed with 160 body pack receivers, plus a further eight 3000/5000 ProRF wireless systems for broadcasters to use for interviews. Wired Sennheiser shotgun microphones captured the atmosphere in the auditorium and the green room, where artists and delegation members waited for the voting results.
Obviously, preparing and setting up for Eurovision is not something that can be achieved overnight. According to James, this translated into six weeks’ worth of onsite preparation in the lead-up to the big night.
“Eurovision is a show with an enormous profile – it has to be perfect and everything has to work. To get this to happen there is a huge effort put into planning the construction of the systems, with production meetings held onsite every day to make sure that things happen smoothly and in a controlled manner. With careful planning and constant monitoring, any issues can be dealt with quickly and effectively,” he says.
“Because of the size and complexity of the show, there was a very tight schedule for building all the various systems and integrating them together. This meant that every system needed to be ready to move in when the schedule called for it, like building an interlocking puzzle – you couldn’t come back and fit a piece in later; every element needed to be integrated in the correct order.”
After the equipment was set up, rigorous testing was done to make sure everything was working to its maximum potential. James explains that all wireless systems were configured and tested by Sennheiser and MM Communications off-site, so that every detail was confirmed before installation.
“This was imperative as there were numerous rehearsals during which the changes to lighting design, video effects, camera shots, etc were planned and practiced, making sure every performer was at their best and looked it.
“Experienced and expert staff involved in planning and collaboration is the secret to making sure everything works successfully.”
With 150 frequencies coordinated for the microphones and monitoring requirements in the arena and media centre, interference with wireless technology was a major issue to take into consideration. As James notes, there were many sources of interference in a show like this, including LED lighting fixtures, wired and wireless communications used by other systems and the general RF noise that is radiated by having such a large number of electronic devices in close proximity to each other. TV towers also had to be considered – not only in Sweden but also the Danish ones located 30km away.
While the absence of LED walls meant a welcome reduction in interference this year, the metal construction of the arena and operating equipment laid a wideband noise over the entire space. A blanket ban on unauthorised users of wireless microphones (mainly members of the media) was also introduced to ease the problem.
“To ensure coverage from the green room, through the production areas, the stage wings and the stage itself, a system of multiple antennas was designed and installed in the rigging. Antenna locations and orientations needed to be planned to ensure that they were never interfering with lighting design, with rigging that moves, that they were never in camera-shot, never in danger from the pyro effects, yet still delivered reliable reception of the microphone signals and delivered reliable transmission to the IEM receivers,” he says.
Other local interference spikes made approximately 50MHz of spectrum unusable. However, the high selectivity and automatic calibration of the Digital 9000 antennas made set-up much easier than with conventional systems, as it is linear in operation and does not require any calculation of intermodulation frequencies.
From the Sennheiser perspective, the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest was another successful show completed.
“In Malmo this year the whole world saw that their new D9000 Series digital wireless microphone technology is fully capable of delivering audio quality significantly better than anything else available, on a scale that is large enough to satisfy every requirement for any show in the world,” James explains.
No doubt, Denmark will have very large shoes to fill when Eurovision visits its shores next year.
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