Optocore recently boosted its portfolio of site-wide fibre network installations for major sporting opening and closing ceremonies when a major system was deployed at the South East Asia Games in Singapore.
The ring system at the National Stadium was designed by major event company and long-standing Optocore customer The Show Company (TSC) — which made a recent substantial investment with local distributor Total Solution Marketing (TSM).
Contracted by Sports SG, TSC added to its existing stock eight X6R-FX-8AE/8LO Optocore converters along with three X6R-FX-16MI, two X6R-TP-16MI, five X6R-TP-16LO interfaces, with a central DD8RP repeater. This enabled the creation of a fibre backbone at the newly constructed 55,000-seat Singapore Sports Hub.
TSC’s Joseph Gan confirmed that since the company’s existing DD32 devices, integrated with Yamaha consoles, remained “rock solid” after so many years, the decision to adopt an Optocore network solution was a no-brainer. “Optocore is a very stable and easily expandable system — ideal for large scale deployment such as this,” he said. “The scale and the importance of the audio support for the Games made it mandatory to have a large dual-redundant ring system, as nothing is allowed to fail.”
All 18 devices were connected in the loop, including 11 X6R-FX devices, set in 11 locations in the stadium. The entire audio system set-up is based on Optocore devices as the mainframe, and all audio signals in the stadium (amplifiers, amplifier remote, wireless mics, band mics and so on) were routed through the Optocore network.
With Jon Sim and Desmond Fong project-managing, six of the X6R-FX devices were located in the control room, receiving AES3 signals from their main Dolby Lake rack processors, and analogue signals from the back-up Dolby Lake rack. Both racks were fed by Avid Profile racks. “Signals were then distributed through the network to all locations where we just picked up the AES3 signals and analogue signals to the amplifiers,” Gan continued.
In addition to feeding audio signals to the power amplifiers, Ethernet from Optocore was also used to control them. This, in turn, fed the NEXO STM line array system used for the Games. The installation was supported by Optocore’s applications engineer, Michal Micka, who carried out on site training. He praised TSC for its impressive set-up and the way in which it deployed this backbone distribution system.
In summary Joseph Gan said, “One thing that we loved was the fact that the amplifier remotes could also be connected to the LAN port of the X6R devices.” As the first important show in the new arena, the event was a complete success. “The Optocore network was rock solid and we had zero glitches,” he added.
