The largest Optocore single ring network ever installed is currently in use in the Cirque du Soleil's Viva ELVIS production at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

The system was chosen by Cirque's sound designer Jonathan Deans after witnessing an Optocore demonstration in New York by Optocore president Marc Brunke. Following discussions in which Deans laid out the unique requirement for Viva ELVIS, Optocore accelerated development of the system to provide for multiple clients in a server-based topology.

"We're the first to use client-servers," says the show's assistant head of audio Aaron Beck. "Up until now, Optocore was run from a single computer. We wanted multiple clients to be able to control any part of the network—we have two clients in the monitor room, one at the front of house, one in the equipment room, and another in the RF area," he explains.

With 21 network devices on the ring out of a possible 24, the system has ample room for expansion. The 21 devices handle 504 audio inputs and 776 outputs, converted to 48 kHz AES digital audio.

A guitar sub-system incorporates three on-stage guitarists, a vault of vintage guitars, a basement full of amplifiers, and a forest of foot pedals that must be switched on the fly while the guitarists are busy with their choreography or riding up the 50' set. MIDI triggers and a chain of 18 different Optocore network devices, Optocore A/D converters, mics and direct inputs (DIs) all interconnected with no buzz or hum, get the job done.

Integration of Optocore fibre optic networks into live performance systems is assured by a very low overall latency of 41.6µs between any points in the synchronous network, regardless of complexity, allowing for use in stage and in-ear monitor applications.

Optocore's ability to create 24 keystroke macros per client is heavily used in Viva ELVIS. One macro was written to switch playback outputs from one Optocore DD2FE MADI I/O module to a second DD2FE, effectively becoming the redundant-switcher. The macro can also be triggered via MIDI, if desired.

"We're using macros a lot in our backup scenarios. We route stem mixes from the FOH console to a Yamaha 02R next to our LCS monitor console. If the LCS were to crash, we can reroute the in-ear monitor signals to come from the 02R with a press of a macro. All band members would continue to get in-ear monitoring while we re-booted the monitor console," Beck says. The YS2 and YG2 expansion cards, made by Optocore for Yamaha digital consoles, allow for simple fibre connection of 32 I/O into a Yamaha 02R.

The crew has found the macros to be so useful that they have programmed more than 100 of them for use at various points during and between shows. Beck says he can easily reroute thousands of patch points in software into or out of any of the show's five main and backup consoles without moving a single wire.

"I wouldn't want to do a show without Optocore now. Regarding cost, I'd say we've saved maybe 50 per cent, based mostly on the cost of labour in terminations per copper connection. In the RF room, for example, we handle the inputs from the mics and the outputs to the in-ear monitors-40 Sennheiser 3732 receivers feed the wireless mic signals via AES digital audio directly into a single rack space Optocore DD32E.

"So what would have totaled in excess of 100 copper lines is reduced to four pieces of fibre. The job of terminating more than 100 copper lines would have taken a couple of guys several days to complete, but with four fibre terminations, one technician can do it in less than an hour," he said.

"On top of that, Optocore is flawless in performance. During the entire production process, I never had to troubleshoot a single ground problem," Beck recalls. "From day one, the system has been completely silent. The first time the monitor mixer turned his speakers up, it was so quiet he didn't even think they were on!"

Associated Buzz Creative provides technical marketing support services for Optocore GmbH and Optocore North America.

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Toronto’s Engineering Harmonics has been named a recipient of the eighth annual ARCHI-TECH AV Award for the integration of outstanding architectural design and advanced audio-visual technology in the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, TX. Also named as co-winners of the award are Clair Brothers, the systems integrator, and Foster + Partners, architect.

Proscenium stage of the Margaret McDermott Performance Hall (left) and exterior lobby of the Winspear Opera House (photos: Iwan Baan)

“It is an honor to be named for our work in connection with this landmark project, and we are gratified that the innovative design of the audio-visual system has been recognized and acclaimed in the awarding of this esteemed prize,” said Philip Giddings, president of Engineering Harmonics Inc. Sponsored by ARCHI-TECH and announced June 9 in Las Vegas at InfoComm by the International Communications Industries Association, Inc.® (ICIA), the ARCHI-TECH AV Awards program honors outstanding examples of the creative and effective integration of technology into nonresidential buildings.

“The ARCHI-TECH AV Awards program showcases the quality of the products and the firms involved in creating these award-winning audiovisual projects,” says Leah Garris, managing editor, ARCHI-TECH.

 “These winning entries represent the pinnacle of design, functionality, and technological achievement,” said Randal A. Lemke, Ph.D., executive director, InfoComm International.

Designed by Foster + Partners under Pritzker Prize-winning architect Norman Foster, the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas was engineered specifically for performances of opera and musical theatre. Its stages have been designed and equipped with appropriate flooring for performances of ballet and other forms of dance.

A 21st-century reinterpretation of the traditional “horseshoe” opera house, the Winspear Opera House's principal performance space is the 2,200-seat Margaret McDermott Performance Hall, featuring retractable screens, a spacious fly-tower, and variable acoustics designed by acoustician Bob Essert of Sound Space Design.

Completed in October 2009 at a cost of some $150 million, the Winspear Opera House was praised by The New York Times chief music critic Anthony Tommasini for its exceptional combination of “richness and resonance” and its bright, clear sound.

Bill Winspear, who donated $43 million to the project, insisted that the new house be first and foremost for opera, with other kinds of performance, such as dance and touring shows, taking second place. Essert aimed for a warm, voluptuous sound best suited for the mainstream 18th- and 19th-century operas featured by the Dallas company, with variable acoustics being incorporated into the hall to support performances of musical theatre and other events requiring the use of a performance sound system. Engineering Harmonics has gained a well deserved reputation for designing performance sound systems that integrate amplified shows into the prized natural acoustics of concert and opera halls.

Working in collaboration with Theatre Projects Consultants, theatre design consultant for the Winspear Opera House, Engineering Harmonics provided its unique blend of design, consulting, process management, and attention to detail that has been acclaimed in its contributions to the Michael and Sonja Koerner Hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Hollywood’s Kodak Theater, the Overture Center in Madison, WI, and the Queen Elizabeth Theater in Vancouver, among many other facilities.

This is the second time that Engineering Harmonics has been honored with an AV ARCHI-TECH Award. The firm previously won in 2004 for excellence in audio-visual design in the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Alan Hardiman of Associated Buzz Creative prepared both successful award submissions.

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The fabulous new Michael and Sonja Koerner Hall at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music features a number of unique technological innovations achieved by consultants Engineering Harmonics of Toronto. Chief among them is an ingenious and visually elegant voice-lift system that integrates with the performance sound system in a way that is truly unique to provide complete coverage to every seat in reinforced applications, where such coverage might otherwise be much more costly or more complex to achieve.

Built over three years at a cost of some $110 million, the 1,135-seat concert hall is the jewel of the new TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning at the Royal Conservatory of Music. The hall achieved the highest possible acoustic rating—N1—rendering it ideal for the finest acoustical performances of classical music, jazz, and world music. The incorporation of variable acoustics makes it equally well suited to amplified music, lectures, and film presentations. The hall features two balcony tiers above the main orchestra level, and a third technical balcony, finished to provide optimal sightlines for live televised broadcasts of performances.

Centre cluster (left), rear view of voice-stick behind centre cluster (middle), and close-up of voice-stick showing house mix position (right)

For reinforced performances, the voice-lift system can be integrated with the flown performance sound system in an ingenious way to provide complete coverage of the orchestra level and the seating in the chorus levels above the sides and rear of the stage.

Yet another design innovation was provision of a permanent mix position at the rear of the parterre level on the centreline, just steps from the door to the sound control room. Touring professionals who may be unfamiliar with the venue will appreciate this, since it gives them a comfortable place to mix in the same acoustic space as the performers.

Read the full article by Associated Buzz Creative's Alan Hardiman in the April 2010 issue of Lighting & Sound America. More information can be found in our coverage in the March-April 2010 issue of Broadcaster.

Photo credits: Tom Arban (left and middle), Bill Coons (right)

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The aurora borealis dancing in the northern sky served as a guiding metaphor in the design of the elaborate Opening Ceremony of the XXI Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver on February 12, as light and projection were employed in place of scenery to dress the gargantuan stage in the 65,000-seat bowl of BC Place, where the ceremony was held indoors for the first time in the history of the Olympics.

Show segments from the Opening and Closing Ceremonies (photos: Ewan McDonald and Bill Coons) 

Lighting director Bob Dickinson went straight from Vancouver after wrapping up the Closing Ceremonies to light the 82nd Academy Awards in Hollywood. Two days later, he was on the phone with Associated Buzz creative director Alan Hardiman, downloading his thoughts and feelings about the experience. Hardiman then caught up with audio director Bruce Jackson, who used 2,000,000 watts of amplifier power in his sound system design, design director Doug Paraschuk, and other members of his team to get their take on producing the largest spectacle ever mounted on Canadian soil.

Featuring the largest air-supported stadium roof in North America, BC Place offered executive producer David Atkins and his design team an unprecedented opportunity to stretch the boundaries of spectacle using state-of-the-art lighting, projection, sound and special effects. The fabric roof presented almost insurmountable challenges in rigging, projection, and sound reinforcement, however, and was sensitive to changes in barometric pressure, temperature, and wind conditions that caused it to rise and fall continuously 1.3 m (4’) during the course of the ceremonies. Furthermore, it limited the total hang in the stadium to some 150 tons.

“We were in a somewhat inhospitable environment that generated a lot of technical issues, just in terms of gravity alone,” said Paraschuk. “Because it was an air-filled venue, we were limited in the amount of equipment we could physically hang from the ceiling. The engineering of the rigging, which was handled by Riggit Services in Vancouver, was a technical nightmare. We had to be very careful about where the rigging points were located, and how we articulated the entire rig in order to get to where we needed to be. We also had to deal with the issue that the ceiling breathed. This caused nightmares in focusing, because it was moving all the time, and so all of our flown elements, and their relationships to the projection and the lighting were encoded,” he said.

Spirit Bear rises up as northern lights dance on the three ring screens during the Opening Ceremony (photo: Ewan McDonald)

“The victory ceremonies every day between the Opening and Closing Ceremonies required an entire additional set of truss masking to be hung in order to create a kind of concert bowl in the venue. The intent was to have it look like a different space on television, and this impacted greatly on our ability to maintain focus and continuity for the Closing Ceremonies, let alone physically rehearse the Closing Ceremonies. Our target for the bowl was 25,000 seats for the victory ceremonies. The full seating in the venue is 55,000, and we expanded the lower bowl lower for opening and closing so the total capacity was about 65,000,” Paraschuk said.

The fabric roof let in so much daylight that programming and rehearsals for the Closing Ceremonies could be conducted only from midnight until dawn, following the conclusion of the daily victory ceremonies and pre-programming for the following night’s headline talent. “The lighting department worked 24 hours a day, with some individuals putting in 16 hour shifts, and that turned out to be more ambitious than we had initially anticipated,” Dickinson said.

Read all about it in the April issue of Lighting & Sound International. More detailed technical illustrations accompany the story in April's Lighting & Sound America.

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Toronto AV consultants Engineering Harmonics designed and specified a hidden voice-lift system and retractable music system in the brand new Winspear Opera House at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas. Designed by Foster + Partners under Pritzker Prize-winning architect Norman Foster, the 2,200-seat hall was engineered specifically for performances of opera and musical theatre. Its stages were designed and equipped with appropriate flooring for performances of ballet and other forms of dance.

A 21st century reinterpretation of the traditional “horseshoe” opera house, the hall features seating that spans five levels: orchestra, box circle, mezzanine, dress circle, and grand tier. While professional opera singers have no trouble being heard in every seat, some amplification—referred to as voice lift—is occasionally required for child singers, announcements from the stage, and voice support for off-stage chorus.

Five seating levels seen from the stage (photo: Iwan Baan) Right: Engineering Harmonics' senior designer Martin Van Dijk

Moreover, the incorporation of variable acoustics by Bob Essert of Sound Space Design was required to support performances of popular music, touring Broadway shows and other events requiring the use of a performance sound system.

Engineering Harmonics has gained a well deserved reputation for designing performance sound systems that integrate amplified shows into the prized natural acoustics of concert and opera halls, which are usually tailored to the performance of acoustic music, and—not coincidentally—funded largely through the philanthropy of patrons of symphony, opera and ballet. A substantial portion of a performing arts centre’s revenue, however, typically comes from other types of performance, such as musical theatre, which is sometimes amplified to levels that can swamp the acoustics so carefully crafted into a hall, unless the performance sound system is properly designed.

The mere presence of voice lift or performance sound systems in an opera house, however, has long been anathema to the opera community. The general director of the Seattle Opera and former host of TV’s Live from the Met, Speight Jenkins, once told The New York Times, “If we give in to amplification or enhancement or whatever the catch phrase is, the very personality of the voices will change. If you go beyond this, which is to me a question of morality, you get close to a place where you are taking away one of the most important characteristics of our art form.”

Such terms as “give in,” “catch phrase,” and “morality” in reference to the use of amplification reveal the intense personal feelings that surround the issue. Regardless of the reasons for the antipathy toward electronics in the opera community, it is preferable that there be no visible evidence of the existence of sound systems in the Winspear Opera House. For this reason a hidden voice-lift system and retractable music system were specified by Engineering Harmonics.

A total of 10 Renkus Heinz digitally steerable Iconyx arrays were installed in the walls running up vertically on either side of the proscenium and aimed at precise angles to cover each of the five seating levels. Iconyx units lend themselves readily to inconspicuous installation, each IC8 array being just over 6” wide and about 3’ high. Four IC8s ranging up the proscenium wall on each side of the stage cover respectively the orchestra, box circle, mezzanine and dress circle. An IC16—comprised of two IC8s arranged one above the other some 6’ high—on each side provides coverage of the grand tier’s expanded upper balcony seating.

Additional delay and surround loudspeakers were hidden in the under- and over-balcony balcony areas where sound energy from the stage may be inadequate to satisfy all patrons. Eight Renkus-Heinz PN82/9s were installed for over-balcony coverage, and, according to Engineering Harmonics' project manager Paul Alegado, these are never switched off. Imagine that—in an opera house, where sound reinforcement is a dirty word, we have a hidden voice-lift system, as well as over-balcony speakers that are always on! This is a testament to how amazingly clean the system is, so well designed that even super critical opera buffs will never become aware of its existence.

The Rhaon system not only transports digital audio; it also permits programming of precise aiming of the Iconyx systems using Beamware software, so that voice-lift intended for each of the five seating levels is delivered exactly where required within tightly controlled angles. The efficiency realized from such precise aiming allows for the maintenance of lower than normal volume levels, which helps the voice-lift system go unnoticed.

When different manufacturers’ digital audio systems are combined into larger systems, even with their individual implementations of the same digital audio network—in this case CobraNet—issues relating to latency times and negotiation between the different components invariably arise. 

"It was a challenge to maintain low latency among all devices in the digital audio network, and to ensure that all digital-to-analog conversion times are consistent," Alegado said. "For example, when the audio signal arrives at one loudspeaker box in a 12-box array, it is essential that the signal latency is identical to the other 11, otherwise the array will behave unpredictably, and not as designed. We had to work very hard with the three manufacturers of the major system components—Yamaha, Biamp and Renkus-Heinz—in order to achieve this."

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Toronto-based singer-songwriter Catherine Bacque is now featured on CBC Radio 3, a new service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that is billed as the home of independent Canadian music. Her limited edition EP Letting Go—produced by Associated Buzz Creative producer Alan Hardiman—can be streamed live from Radio 3, and is available for download on iTunes and CD Baby.

Each of the CD's five songs spotlights a different facet of Catherine's amazing talent. Kicking off with I Did, I Will, I Do, the album hits high gear right away with a brash, no-nonsense anthem featuring Catherine's insistent acoustic guitar figures and the incisive Telecaster of Tim Bovaconti (Burton Cummings, Ron Sexsmith) in a take-no-prisoners paean to the power of love.

In Fly, we hear in Catherine's voice and lyrics the determination of a triumphant survivor of the fickle fates of love. Virtuoso bassist Alain Caron (Alain Caron Band, Uzeb) underscores Catherine with his six-string fretless in a riveting melodic duet.

Next, the haunting melody and lyrics of With You  are perfectly complemented by Jack Gelbloom's (Take Five) evocative jazz piano and Doug Cotton's (Format, John) tasteful precision drumming.

Kicking it up again with Say That You Want Me, Catherine shows that she knows how to rock with the best of them.Tim's guitar punctuation and Jack's joyously infectious B3 are anchored by Hardiman's tight bass line.

The album wraps up with You're Still Mine, a love song of steadfastness and faithfulness in the face of life's struggles and shortcomings, aimed as much at your children as your lover.

(Photography by Doug Cotton. CD design by Paul Kelly, Gecko Graphics)

Catherine is a Canadian singer/songwriter with roots in 60s and 70s folk, pop, and rock. Her style ranges from jazzy ballads to straight out country rock. According to her mother, Catherine sang in the cradle while her father played Vivaldi and Benny Goodman on the stereo. Later, her parents introduced her to the Beatles, Elvis, Duke Ellington, Gilles Vigneault, Monique Leyrac, Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell.

Catherine went on to discover Emmylou Harris, traditional Canadian folk music, and classic American country artists such as Patsy Cline and Hank Williams. Today Catherine loves to listen to Sarah McLachlan, Dala, The Dixie Chicks, The Tragically Hip, Melissa McClelland, Kathleen Edwards and Sheryl Crow.

More information, photos & lyrics: www.catbacque.com 

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Celebrate the Canadian Dream, a sound and light extravaganza projected onto the stone façade of the provincial legislative building in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, has completed its inaugural season that began July 2. The success of the 22-minute production, which will run each summer through 2014, was due largely to the intensive planning that went into its creation—not to mention a state-of-the-art battery of performance sound and video systems pressed into service for the duration.

Projection grid mapped onto façade of Province House (left); Anne of Green Gables show segment (photos: avhlive)

The production is a sweeping view of Canada’s cultural, social, and political achievement, with an emphasis on Prince Edward Island’s role in the history and development of the country. After all, it was this very building, Province House, in which the fathers of confederation gathered in 1864 for a historic conference that led to unification of Canada three years later. (The original provinces were Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Northwest Territories were added in 1870, with British Columbia and Prince Edward Island joining in 1871 and 1873, respectively.)

It’s fitting that the show was designed by the same team—Toronto’s AVH Live Communications—who designed the Spirit of a Country sound and light show staged on the walls of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, the nation’s capital. Spirit of a Country finished its five-year run this past September.

Read the feature article by Associated Buzz Creative's Alan Hardiman in the November 2009 issue of Lighting & Sound America.

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