Pro16 Digital Snakes for the Turandot Opera
Overview
Giacomo Puccini’s 1924 epic opera, Turandot, was performed for an audience of almost 35,000 people in one of the largest opera performances ever staged with the help of digital snake products from Aviom. Details
Key Features
- Ease of creating unlimited digital splits that need to be 180m apart each, using just Cat-5 cable
- Simplicity of setup
- Reliability and robustness of the products
Products Used
- Pro16 Series
- 2 AN-16/i Input Modules
- 10 AN-16/o Output Modules
A-Net Simplifies Multiple Splits
When called upon to design and implement the audio setup for an ambitious production of Giacomo Puccini’s 1924 epic opera, Turandot, at the Stade de France in Paris, Germany’s Westfalen Sound selected a Pro16 Aviom digital snake to create a distribution network for sending returns throughout the stadium.
With the help of Aviom’s German distributor, S.E.A. Vertrieb & Consulting GmbH, Westfalen Sound selected the Pro16 system for the ease of creating unlimited lossless digital splits without the need for transformer units.
Using the Pro16 system, Westfalen Sound was able to distribute audio signals the necessary 180m over Cat-5e. Other Cat-5e solutions cannot achieve runs of this length, and fiber, the other alternative, is more expensive and makes for a more complex system. S.E.A.’s Torsten Roeger also suggested the Aviom digital snake for this event because it is “easy to handle and reliable.”
S.E.A. Vertrieb & Consulting GmbH
The snake was used to send audio from the front-of-house mix position over a distance of 180m to the amp and speaker array system that fed the entire stadium. At the front-of-house DiGiCo D5 Live console, 32 channels were fed into two AN-16/i Input Modules. Each AN-16/i was connected to an AN-16/o Output Module, and these output modules were each daisy chained to four additional AN-16/o units, creating digital splits of the content.
The Pro16 digital snake simplified setup for Westfalen Sound and saved them a significant amount of time. The sound company was able to rely on A-Net for the long cable runs in this system that delivered sound to an audience of almost 35,000.
