latest news headlines
Digico Helps Qataris Aspire to Sporting Excellence
Mid-November saw a lavish opening ceremony for a brand new, vast sports dome in Doha, Qatar. Said to be the largest indoor facility of its kind in the world, the Dome is home to ASPIRE, the country’s Academy for Sports Excellence. Covering 290,000 square metres, it houses an Olympic-sized swimming pool, athletics track, gymnastics hall, games hall, full-sized and five-a-side football pitches, tennis courts, table tennis courts, fencing strips, squash courts and a martial arts studio. There are also lecture halls, classrooms, laboratories, dormitories, a library, an amphitheatre and a medical centre.
Such a comprehensive facility demanded a suitably high profile opening ceremony. Lasting three days, the event featured legendary international sports personalities, Olympic delegations from over 80 countries and representatives from other major sports federations. As well as the opening ceremony itself, a conference and gala dinner were integral to the celebrations.
The technical specification for the ceremony was vast - 210 tons of equipment being airfeighted in. Of course, for such a massive event it had to be 200% reliable. Enter two DiGiCo D5 Live consoles under the aegis of audio specialists Delta Sound, with Paul Keating as sound designer and Richard Sharratt as the project’s FOH engineer.
Central to the opening ceremony were performances by Cirque du Soleil and Qatari schoolchildren - a cast of over 1,000 - but there were also speeches, guest appearances, the conference and a vast playback spec to take care of.
“The D5 Live was the obvious choice of console because the footprint was so small on the control tower - which was eight metres in the air - and because there were so many inputs coming from stage,” says Delta Sound’s Paul Keating. “It would have been absolutely impossible to have done the show with an analogue configuration. And I love the D5 as a console!”
The D5s controlled a flown L-Acoustics V-Dosc and dV-Dosc line array loudspeaker system, with the D5 Live’s snapshot feature proving absolutely essential for the tremendously varied sound requirements of the event.
“The two D5s were used in mirror mode,” Paul continues. “We were running 48 tracks of playback, with all processing, dynamics and effects done within the console. We also used a rack of DiGiTubes. Everything was done with snapshots and the entire system worked faultlessly throughout. The reliability and sound quality were both first class.”
The opening celebrations were a total success and ASPIRE is now looking forward to the Dome’s facilities being used to train many generations of future Qatari sportsmen. Next year the Dome is host to the Asian Games, which will put its facilities well and truly on the international map.
19th December 2005
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
