Clair Nashville supplied a Digico SD10 for the 2014 NHL (National Hockey League) Stadium Series, which took place at outdoor venues across North America recently.

The choice of console for the games, held at arenas in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, was made by Ron Reaves, the man responsible for mixing the live musical entertainment. Reaves mixed the music and fed it to NBC’s broadcast production engineer, who then added it into the audio mix.

The system’s Optocore fibre optic transport capabilities were critical, Reaves reported: “As it turned out, it was the right choice, because I was 2,000 feet from the stage. The Clair Brothers splitters plugged into the 56-input SD-Racks each handled 40 inputs, so I was landing 80 inputs.”

The NHL’s Winter Classic event, which was played on the campus of the University of Michigan, featured an SD10 as well. The live music line-up included four members of the Zac Brown Band singing the US national anthem, as well as The Tenors performing the Canadian anthem.

“The tools that are available on the desk are enormous; it’s just an amazingly powerful piece of kit,” added Reaves, who relies completely on the onboard Super FPGA audio processing, and has been using Digico since the 2012 Grammys. “I think the EQ, compressors and other processing built into the console sound great. There’s not an audio problem out there that you can’t solve with this console. And it is fantastically easy to use."

Reaves again found himself behind the desk at the 2014 NHL Heritage Classic – historically a showdown involving Canadian teams. This year’s match went ahead at BC Place in Vancouver (pictured), and saw the Ottawa Senators take on the Vancouver Canucks.

Grammy Award winner Sarah McLachlan sung the Canadian national anthem, while Tegan and Sara provided the pre-game and first intermission entertainment. Vancouver-based Odds performed during the second intermission.

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