Harman?s Studer competes at World Gymnaestrada

A Studer Vista 5 SR console was recently used at the World Gymnaestrada, the world’s largest gymnastics exhibition.

With almost 20,000 participants from 55 nations, the event, held in Lausanne, Switzerland, saw event specialist Skynight SA of Geneva use a Studer Vista 5 SR console to mix the opening ceremonies, whilst simultaneously producing a feed for television networks.

The highly configurable Vista 5 SR used a setup of 208 input channels on a small footprint of 32 faders, through its Vistonics user interface. This made the console ideal for Martin Reich, who planned the audio installation with Skynight, and also manned the desk during the event with the help Riedel RockNet’s digital audio network.

“We decided to use the Vista 5 SR with Rocknet because it provided the greatest amount of flexibility right through to the end of the event,” Reich said. “One example is that after the opening ceremony some of the stages with live music were not used anymore. This system allowed us to simply remove the unused stageboxes without the need to reconfigure the network. Thanks to the good preparation and cooperation of all involved, the system was up and running within the shortest possible time, and it ran throughout the event without a glitch.”

In total, over 180 audio sources coming from four different stages around the stadium had to be transported to the FOH position. Cable runs were long, with the connection from the west stage to the east stage running 300 meters. The Rocknet system, which makes use of either Cat5 or optical fibre links, ensured heavy analogue multicore cables were eliminated from the system design, and sources were plugged into one of the 12 Rocknet stageboxes and converted to the digital domain directly at the place where they originated. This was the first large-scale event where three Rocknet rings were connected to a Studer Vista console.