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It was a defining moment: Cathy Freeman had lit thecauldron, the anthemic strains of Berlioz had liftedthe audience’s emotion to a fever pitch, when, creak,wibble, lurch… the cauldron stalled. It was almostlike the entire human race was holding their breaths

with a mixture of consternation and anticipation. Surelysomething had gone wrong. After some three agonisingminutes the gods of Olympus smiled on us – the flameeventually ascended to its rightful position, and the skyignited with a kaleidoscope of fireworks.

I think at that moment, after a sumptuous andseamless celebration, we all had an inkling of the type ofpressures and demands placed on all those puttingtogether this event. Everything had to be perfect, therewas no second night… this was it.

When the opening ceremony supremos gave theoverall responsibility for the sound design to BruceJackson, I doubt whether there would have been toomany dissenters. Bruce’s credentials are impeccable.He’s been responsible for some of the largest (and best

sounding) concerts around, he’s known for his ability toremain calm in a crisis, his powers of diplomacy anddealing with bureaucracy are well documented, and, ofcourse, he’s Australian. Bruce’s first step was to bringtogether a crack team of Australian engineers to takeresponsibility for the key areas of the ceremony’s pro-duction. Other than Bruce Jackson the key personnel Ispoke to were:

John Simpson – John’s well known around the trapsas being one of the most competent engineers inAustralia – whether it’s in broadcast, live sound orrecording, ‘Simmo’ has seen it all. John was Bruce’s righthand man, helping to co-ordinate sessions and liaisewith SOBO (Sydney Olympic Broadcast Organisation).

Steve Logan – Steve joined the team on secondmentfrom Fairlight. Armed with a powerful system ofFairlight Merlin 24-bit digital multitrackers, he remainedkey in recording, mixing and editing the orchestralsessions, as well as the playback on the night. In Bruce’swords, “We’d be lost without the Fairlight, and even

Sound for theOlympic Opening

Ceremony

The Olympic opening ceremony was by far and away the most ambitious concertevent ever undertaken in this country. Christopher Holder caught up with some ofthe key personnel behind the sound production.

Sound for theOlympic Opening

Ceremony

more lost without Steve”.Chris Kennedy – Chris is head of Norwest, the sound

contractor for the event. All up he supplied more than$4m worth of equipment, including a monster EAWsystem (which replaced the house system for the night),Midas consoles, as well as truck loads of wireless micro-phone and monitoring systems for the performers.

Colin Stevenson – Getting the sound right for FOH wasa hard enough, but bringing together all the extra elementsfor broadcast was something else. Armed with a phalanx ofRamsa SX-1 consoles, Colin and his team supplied a stun-ningly atmospheric and energetic mix to the scores of on-site broadcasters for worldwide distribution.

Fairlight Merlin MagicAround the time that Kevin Gosper was taking happysnaps of his flame-bearing daughter at the foot of MountOlympus, the opening ceremony program was busilybeing recorded. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra wasrecorded either at Studios 301 or the Opera House,depending on the scale of the session. Richard Lush wasproducer for the sessions, while Fairlight’s Steve Loganwas brought in to record them on the company’s newlyreleased Merlin multitrack recorder, (using Fairlight’s newsouped-up QDC engine).Steve Logan: Initially I was brought in to record theopening ceremony music and play it back on the night,but the Fairlight ended up editing the whole thing – itnever actually left the Fairlight platform at any stage.CH: So when did the powers at be say, ‘hang on, Steveand the Merlin can do the whole job for us’?SL: I think what made the difference was the fact that wewere able to edit the 24-track projects straight after theorchestral sessions. Instead of mixing down stereo tracksand editing those, we were editing on the 24-tracksources. For example, the Berlioz recording [whichaccompanied Cathy’s lighting of the cauldron] wasscheduled to take all day to record, when in fact werecorded it and edited it in the same day. It was ready tobe mixed by 5:30pm!CH: So how was the mixing achieved?SL: The mixdown all came off the edited Merlin multi-tracks through Studio 301’s SSL and then back onto theMerlin. Coming off the edited Merlin gave it a real conti-nuity right the way through the mixing process. We wereable to mix right through all the edits and the naturalreverb carried all the way through the edits – so it was amuch better process.John Simpson: Steve might be loath to tell you this,being on the Fairlight payroll, but the thing about thecurrent level Fairlight is it sounds so good. The resolutionon the machine is astonishing! Even Richard Lush, who’snot a Fairlight disciple at all, said he couldn’t believe hewas hearing playback from a Merlin. He’s a real tape guyand he said it was the closest he’s heard to tape.CH: Was the music mixed down as a two-track mix?SL: We actually mixed a number of submixes which wecalled the ‘stems’. The stems were the various compo-nents, like the orchestra, the rhythm section, the choir, the

lead vocals, etc. We did that in the mix by just muting theappropriate channels on the SSL and leaving the leftoverswhich constituted that stem. This meant that each submixstem was perfectly in phase with one another. All up, wefinished with a stereo full-mix track, 12 tracks of sixstereo stems, another mono track as the conductor’s cue,and then another track which was solely for the fireworkscue. So we had 16 tracks all up.CH: And a timecode track?SL: Timecode was generated by the Merlin.CH: I imagine timecode was pretty critical on the night.How did you use it to pull together the various audio cues?SL: We had 21 cues for the whole show. Each cue was

effectively the start of a new segment – whether it wasthe opening segment, the nature segment, the cauldronlighting segment, etc. I started each one of those cues atthe top of a new timecode hour, and all the timing forthat whole segment was taken from the timecodegenerated by the Fairlight. (I used the timecode hournumber to confirm which segment I was running.) TheFairlight’s timecode was sent to the timecode reader forvideo burning, so I burnt that into the actual program,

Bruce Jackson: When you hear the first horse galloping in, that’s derived from a mic attached to itsbelly strap. It’s interesting to listen to that, because the first part of the gallop is over the runningtrack, but then he hits the grass underneath, so it goes from ‘thud thud thud’ to like a very lowfrequency ‘plomp plomp plomp’ – not the standard horses’ hooves you expect to hear fromHollywood, (we gave to them later via an FX track).John Simpson: The first crack of the whip from the stockman was an issue as well. A real whipsounds pretty lame in an arena like that, so we decided a silent whip should be used and we wouldsupply the effect on the fly.Unfortunately the horse didn’t respond to timecode(!) so Steve had the unenviable task of getting thetiming right. So just as that first horse rode out, Steve was there with his finger poised above the playbutton sweating on that whip.BJ: Steve was taking his cue from the TV coverage so I was worried that the TV camera would cutaway just at the wrong time.Steve Logan: Thank God it worked!

Fair Crack of the Whip

Steve Logan mans his three-Fairlight system.

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and it got distributed to anyone who wanted it – SOBOwas actually calling camera cues off the timecode, stagemanagement was using the timecode to call the runningof the show – it ended up being very vital.CH: How much of the timing and syncing could you dobefore the night and how much needed to happen lastminute?SL: I was able to piece together most of the show fromthe script, prior to setting up at Stadium Australia. But wewere actually editing during the rehearsals. We were ableto change things in between actual rehearsal runs while

there were people on the field.CH: What sort of things were you changing?SL: Adding bars, subtracting bits, new sound effects…The main thing was changing the timing of stuff instantly,while they were on the field. If a certain routine neededmore time to get off the field then we could add fourextra bars on the multitrack (over all the submixes) simul-taneously and have the edit ready for the next run-through minutes later – which may have been a 24-hourprocess by other methods.JS: Which may well be a first. I’m not sure whethersomeone has said, “we need another 35 seconds acrossthese 16 different tracks plus watch out for that clicktrack”… and, bang, there it is. It’s an amazingly powerfulway to work. The organisers got used to that sort of flexi-bility, but you shudder to think how we would have got onwithout it.

Front of HouseBruce Jackson is well known to be exacting in his soundrequirements and prior to the Olympics organised ashoot-out for the principal Australian rental companieswith the capacity to service an event like the openingceremony. After various evaluation sessions at StadiumAustralia, Norwest won the contract as principal soundcontractor for the event. Head of Norwest, ChrisKennedy, supplied some $4m worth of stock.

Increasingly, live sound system designers are becomingsavvy to the benefits of distributing audio via fibreopticcable. The sort of conventional cable runs required atStadium Australia would have been enormous. Forexample, the perimeter moat around the field is 614metres in itself. The risk of signal loss, high frequencyroll-offs and interference due to transmitter radiation wasbypassed by moving to fibre.Bruce Jackson: “Originally I was thinking about using theOtari Light Winder system because that’s what the Inter-national Broadcast Centre (IBC) had chosen. I figured thatit would make sense if we were compatible with that – justfrom a failure point of view. Then Thomas Klotz (of KlotzDigital), who I’ve known for years, contacted me andexpressed an interest in being involved. I tested out hisVadis system on the Streisand concerts and found thenew preamps he’d designed sounded good and the wholesystem was superior because of the routing flexibility youdon’t get with the Otari system. So it turned out to be greatchoice. Plus, we ended up with a lot more Vadis framesthan I originally thought we’d be using. We actually hadthe luxury of running drops where we could probably haverun copper. We had the various Vadis frames in a numberof strategic locations, so the audio could jump on and offof the bus really easily. It was also very reliable.”In fact, 13 Vadis frames were distributed throughoutStadium Australia and the IBC. They provided all theaudio routing and signal distribution to and from thestage, to and from the IBC, and to all the ceremony’s PAamplifiers in the system. The system allowed any signalinterfaced to Klotz to be routed to anywhere else on Klotzat the click of a mouse in the Audio Control Room.Four consoles were used during the ceremonies – one forfront of house mixing, another for subgroup routing andmonitor mixing, a third for clean feed mixing for broad-casters and the last as a backup FOH console. A Vadis

frame in the console area allocated the share of the fourconsoles’ inputs and outputs. Six further Frames werelocated in the moat around the centre field. These frameswere used for fixed microphone and wireless microphoneinputs, feeds to the PA amplifier racks and feeds for mon-itoring. The remaining frames were positioned in thegantry, the highest platform level in the stadium. Theseframes were used for the signal distribution to the PAsystem and the balcony clusters.This system gave the Ceremony’s Artistic Team a greatdeal of flexibility during the process of designing the FOHsystem layout. If the director had decided to move an actfrom one stage to a different stage location, it was asimple matter of doing somere-routing or, if drastic,swapping some cards in theback of a Vadis. The matrixallows for versatile signal dis-tribution without the use ofanalogue splitters, linedriversand trafo’s, while the ethernetnetwork gives access to thesystem status of all frames.

Thanks to Keith Prestidge andWil Stam of Klotz Digital fortheir assistance.

Klotz Fibreoptic distribution

Keith Prestidge was the Klotz engineer. Notice the two 7.5kWUPSs bottom right.

Chris Kennedy (right) and Steve Law at the main mix position.

Chris Kennedy: Prior to the games I brought in a L-Acoustics and an EAW system for evaluation and endedup getting the contract with our EAW stock. CH: So was it a matter of supplying extra reinforce-ment for the house system?CK: No. Other than 10 boxes in a second delay line, noneof the house system was used. We had to fly the wholelot, in fact, if there’d been a suitable way to replace thedelay line, Bruce would have been doing that as well.

Around the perimeter of the field we put in 23 linearray clusters in lots of two on the ground – they’re theEAW KF860 virtual line array cabs. Flown in the roof ofthe stands were KF750 cabs. We used a bunch of KF755downfill cabs as our ground monitors – they’ve got azero-up angle as opposed to the 15 degree angle, which isreally helpful in not causing too many problems with thePA and delay times in the stands themselves. Then Pro-duction Audio came to the party on EAW’s behalf with32 more KF750s which we hung eight a side in the roofof the east and west stands [the main stands along thetwo straights of the track] to replace the Bose boxes thatwere in there. Then we hung a delay line right up the backwhere there was nothing to service it, with seven Zeck T-3s a side. We dealt with the end zone stands by flyingcabinets from the roof of the main stands. Mixing wastaken care of by two Midas Heritage 3000 consoles,which were manned by John Simpson and Steve Law.CH: Bruce, was the house system not up to the job?Bruce Jackson: I didn’t approach this with any precon-ceived ideas – it was down to a listening test. We listenedto a number of systems, including the Bose housesystem, and the EAW system won the audition. I think the

installers have done a nice job with the house system –it’s designed to perform a function at a price, but thatfunction doesn’t include something as stringent as theshow we put on.

To come in on budget, the house system needed tomake some compromises. For example, the coverage ofthe end zone stands isn’t ideal – the speakers aremounted on the lighting poles and shooting back downthe stand towards the field. Ideally you shoot forwardbecause you can’t shoot backwards in time when you’recalculating your delay times. I decided that I wanted todo it the right way and shoot in the other direction – sowe placed the speakers in the truss with them shooting upinto the end zones. That worked out fine.CH: And what about the mics and monitoring, Chris?CK: There’s a lot of Shure radio mics, a lot of in-earmonitors, and a lot of EAW SM200ih wedges – they’re areally neat, low profile box, which put out a lot of punch.Most people needed to use in-ear monitoring [IEM]because of the distances required and because some per-formers needed stage management instruction from timeto time – and we needed that to happen without itcoming out of a wedge. IEM is a nice way to go if RFholds up nice and solid. We used Shure PSM600 and 700sand Sennheiser in-ears. The Sennheisers were the slimpacks for the girls who were wearing next to nothing, theShure PSM600s were for all the musicians (because wethink they sound better) and PSM700s for the less criticalstuff. Then we had nearly 1,000 FM receivers tuned to aspecial licensed channel. They were for the 700 tapdancers the 120 horse riders who needed something intheir ears for timing.

How to mic and mix a 2,000-plus piece brass band forworldwide broadcast? That was the question faced byColin Stevenson. Although much of the ceremony’s musicwas pre-recorded and sent to Colin as submix stems, themarching band was one huge, 2,400-piece loose cannon.Colin grappled with the issue of miking the band andcame up with an ingenious solution.Colin Stevenson: The marching band was a hugechallenge. The obvious way to go was to loose mic them.So, we started off by having three Audio Technica micseach side of the stadium pointed at the arena, and anAudio Technica stereo shotgun mic mounted to a cameraon a catenary wire right in the middle of the arena – whichgave a nice overall sound but it didn’t have any sizzle.The other problem with only using perimeter mics is thatwhen the telecast cuts to a hand held camera up close tothe band (with Audio Technica stereo shotgun micsattached to them), the audio would jump in time becauseof the delay between the close mic and the distant ones.So I really needed to somehow get amongst the perform-ers.There were eight conductors’ rostrums dotted about thearena so I put a Shure VP88 on each of those risers withtwo Sennheiser high power transmitters – we needed thatextra power because it was an RF nightmare out there.Those mics helped, but on the first rehearsal it still didn’thave any zing in it.I then had this idea for turning the brass band’s hats into

a PZM. As you’re aware, the ‘Pressure Zone Mic’ principleworks by pointing a mic at a flat surface. So, I used aSony ECM44B omni lavalier mic and pointed it at thebrim of the bands’ Drizabone hats they were wearing. Ialso attached a Sony 10mW transmitter to the hat as welland it worked astonishingly well.The mic is attached at the back of the hat [see right], andfrom front to back there’s about 10dB to 12dB differencein pickup. So you don’t really hear the guy wearing thishat, but the pickup of the band members coming behindwas very good. Originally I wanted more than 40 ofthese hat mics but there was a big tangle with RFspectrum, so I had to settle for five. The hatmics gave the mix real balls, they worked outwell.CH: Did you experiment with otherhats? For example, how does anAkubra mic measure up against theDrizabone equivalent?!GS: Well, now that you mention it, we did findthe Akubra had a slightly better sound quality!The Akubra is rabbit felt, while the Drizabone ismade of wool, and I think the Akubra is a little denserand stiffer, so I was getting more HF – it was a little bitbrighter. But I was more than happy with the Drizabonehat on the night.

Brass Bands and Hat Mics

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I suppose we all learnt a few lessons from the ‘96 Atlantagames. For most of us it was a matter of making a mentalnote not to loiter near unattended ticking hand luggage, orto see about scrapping any Olympic discipline whichbegan with the word ‘Synchronised’. Bruce Jackson tooka very different lesson from the Atlanta experience.Bruce Jackson: Atlanta had a problem right before theopening ceremony went on air – their hard disk crashed.So they had to go back to all their source material (whichwas on DATs and CDs), to play the show. Unfortunatelythe fireworks finale was all triggered by theSMPTE track and, of course, all the SMPTEwas lost when the hard disk went down. So,a million dollars worth of fireworks didn’tgo off when it should have. That sort ofstuff can happen to anyone, but I didn’twant it to happen to me. I wanted to buildin levels of fail-safes, which probablyadded a fair bit of money to what we did,but I couldn’t see it happening any otherway.I would wake up at night in fear of what wasgoing to fail, and then I’d immediately pickup the phone and put things in place. Ithink my paranoia trickled down toeveryone else. Once they saw I wasconcerned about things, I’d get suggestionsfrom members of the team saying, ‘well,what if this happens?’.CH: What sort of things are wetalking about?Bruce Jackson: For example, we had twobig 7.5kW UPSs [Uninterruptable PowerSupplies], which are the biggest I’ve everused by a long shot. So if you flipped the breakers, otherthan a beep going off on the UPS, our life would go on asnormal. Meanwhile Chris Kennedy had various fail-safelayers built into the main system.Chris Kennedy: If there was not two of something in themain system, then it’s because there’s three of something!So if someone was wearing in-ear monitoring then theywere also standing in front of a wedge. If they had a radiomic then there was a second radio mic available, and ifboth of those didn’t work then there’s a wired onesomewhere. Everything had a backup.CH: Even if a console went down?CK: Definitely. We actually had all the inputs split via XTA

DS800 mic/line splitters, and every area, almost withoutexception, was getting every input, including broadcast.So the net result was we had two Midas XL8s on as abackup. At a switch of two faders, we could change wherewe were taking the source. So if the console out the frontsuddenly fell over, then in the time it takes for someone tomove two faders, the mix could be controlled by the otherconsole. Similarly if they both failed, we could actuallytake the broadcast mix and run that through the FOHsystem.

Also, the Klotz fibreoptic routing system works backwardsand forwards, we had copper wire backups for the fibre,and we had ways of going to the house system if thatwhole system fails. You’ve got to go through four or fivesmall catastrophes before we actually ended up with somepart of the system not being serviced.CH: And what about the Fairlights Steve? If aMerlin caught alight did you have a plan?Steve Logan: The whole system consisted of threeFairlights. Two of those were our main machines and oneof those two was my primary machine (the one I wasplaying back from). So I had two identical machinesrunning off SPGs [Sync Pulse Generators – which

generate synchronising pulses needed by video sourceequipment to provide proper equipment video signaltiming], and they were both locked to SOBO’s colourblack [otherwise known as Blackburst, a syncing signal]and they were set up such that I could lose the colourblack signal and the sessions would still run. Each one ofthose systems was on a separate power supply – so if onewent down, the other one would still run. The mode ofoperation was that I’d put the backup machine into LTCchase. So after I hit play on the master machine when I got

cued, I’d then immediately take thebackup machine out of chase into jamsync. So the backup machine was cued tothe frame, and through the SPGs theywere actually frame-locked from thatpoint on, all the way to the end of the cue.If at any stage something started to gowrong we could immediately crossfadeinto the other machines. We actually triedit out and it all worked. Within one or twoseconds of the cue being called I actuallyhad a completely independent phase-locked system, so that was the backup.But we never needed it.

BroadcastSoundTheresponse tothe sound ofthe openingceremonybroadcasthas been

universally rapturous, and the man to whom most creditmust go is Colin Stevenson. Colin’s one of the mostexperienced and acclaimed producers in Australia. Withlong stints in TV and radio he was lured out of ‘semi-retirement’ for a last hurrah.

Colin Stevenson’s task was to bring all the excitement

of the ceremony into your living room (and the livingrooms of the other four billion viewers worldwide). So,the biggest hurdle to jump was to get the ambient atmos-phere of the stadium just right. This was no easy taskwhen any audience mics would be struggling to rejectthe high output of the PA cabinets. But thanks to someneat microphone design from Audio Technica, the con-trolled dispersion of the EAW cabinets, and some clevermic placement, Colin pulled it off stunningly.Colin Stevenson: My mission was to get the wholebroadcast out to the world as if they were in the stadiumas part of the audience, and that meant having the soundbig and loose – sure, it had to be present as well, but theemphasis was on getting the ambience right. I was veryfamiliar with the EAW KF750 and KF860 cabs beingused and their excellent pattern control. With that in

Nothing Wrong With Paranoia

23 pairs of EAW KF860 virtual line array cabs were placed around theperimeter of the ground.

Colin Stevenson (foreground) and Mike Smith.

Bruce Jackson: We had a problem with the lectern. Wehad more than a one foot difference between the height ofMichael Knight and Juan Antonio Samaranch. Theoriginal idea was to use a gooseneck mic so Mr.Samaranch could pull it down, but that wasn’t going tohappen accurately enough. So we ended up going for amotorised mic (designed by Dave Goldie) which went upand down at the appropriate time. Mr. Samaranch isn’t abig man and Peter Faiman [well-known Australian filmdirector and the ceremony’s video director] was

concerned about having a big mic in his face, so we usedtwo Countryman Isomaxs and an omni mic. It was a littlenerve-racking but the mic lowered on cue.I also have to say a word about the poor governor general.The other announcers on the night all had monitors attheir feet, whereas the Governor General was standing upin the stand and his monitor was the PA system! So whenhe stepped up to the mic he was hearing himself withabout a 150ms delay, and we all know what that’s like. Ithink some people maybe thought he was hitting the

sauce before the show, but the reality is that he was musthearing himself 150ms later, which is a tough thing.

Bruce Jackson: When you’re dealing with 700 tap dancers, you can’t afford to give them good qualityShure in-ear monitors. The stadium already had 1,000 FM radios for the hard of hearing – they’reChinese built and $15 a piece. So we borrowed a bunch of those, but people would tend to take themhome on a regular basis, so we had to keep on buying new ones. For the new ones we had to go for$17 Radio Shack versions. They didn’t really cut it for certain applications so we had to buy evenbetter ones from Sanyo, which were around $100 a piece. We had about 150 of those. The FM trans-mission worked well. If you look at the video you’ll see all the tap dancers up and down the aislesdancing in perfect unison. Meanwhile, if they were relying on hearing things acoustically, thenthere’d obviously be a timing difference between the guys hearing things right away and the guyshearing it through the PA.We gave Cathy Freeman a better Sennheiser system for her ears. Peter Labser was prompting herthroughout the cauldron lighting and apparently he did a fantastic job. Obviously it was a prettynervous moment for her but he told her things like, “this is your moment, make sure you stand thereand enjoy yourself, now it’s time to light the cauldron…” and he could actually see her respondingand smiling. He was able to supply a stabilising, fatherly influence, because I can imagine it wouldbe very scary standing there performing that function.

mind I was able to place the new Audio Technica 895Adaptive Array mics in the right spots. I placed the 895mics up in the gantry pointing into the stands in betweenthe throw of each of these EAW arrays. You can alterthis mic’s pattern from a flat to a horizontal or verticallobe. So we worked with the vertical lobe to bring it intight between each of the EAW arrays. The resultingseparation was very good and this made my life a loteasier in supplying good ambience for the broadcast.CH: So you were able to have the ambience thereunderpinning the broadcast mix without needing tochange its level much?CS: Oh no, the ambience has to brought up and down,you can’t leave it wide open otherwise when Oliviastarted to sing, or Juan Antonio comes to the mic youlose intelligibility. You need to constantly ride theambience faders in sympathy with the rise and fall of thecrowd and where the telecast is at. The problem is when

From Knight to Samaranch to the Governor General

Syncing the Tap Dancers & Cathy

you bring up the ambience you have a gloriously wide and loosesound, but when you need to bring down the ambience, the soundcomes in tight. What we did was use a Lexicon 480L to smooth outthose transitions.CH: Surely there’s going to be an audible difference between theLexicon ambience and the actual stadium ambience?CS: We worked to make sure there wasn’t. We came in to StadiumAustralia for the NRL grand final and listened to the sound of thestadium. Then with the 480L we simulated that ambience. After agreat deal of tweaking we got to the point where you could openthe ambient mics, do a quick crossfade to the 480L and it was veryhard to pick between the two.

So in the mix I had the 480L sitting at a reasonable level with thelive stadium ambience sitting underneath it. Then on the ‘reveals’,(where you hear the crowd applaud and cheer), I brought thestadium ambience right up. But I couldn’t have done that withoutthe 480L smoothing that transition. I tell you, there’s as much art indoing ambience and ‘big feel’ stuff as there is in mixing music –and believe me I’ve done a lot of both.

Like ClockworkWith every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed you get the feeling thatfor these men it was a matter of rocking up to the openingceremony, lining up for a $5 beer, taking their positions anddrawing straws to see who pressed the big red ‘Go’ button.Remarkably, things were almost that relaxed… well maybe notquite that relaxed.Bruce Jackson: How did it go? As rehearsed. Actually better thanrehearsed! It was very messy in the rehearsals, so it was quite asurprise that we were as bug free as we were for the show. Earlier inthe day I did a final walk around. I went to every single speakercabinet, just to make sure nothing was muted, and just to make sureI was comfortable, and then, that was it – don’t touch anything, let’sleave it alone!Steve Logan: We were able to get the balance right on theFairlights during rehearsal, so there wasn’t much mixing on thenight at all. In fact, we pseudo-mastered it during the rehearsals, sothe basic mix was made with all the faders flat at unity.CH: How did you decide on the exact nature of the final mix?SL: All the people taking the feeds had a say on where the levelssat. So we picked the best compromise between all of those

The Fairlight Merlin on-site at a Studios 301 orchestral session.

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PA System Specs

Bruce Jackson – Audio DirectorChris Kennedy – Principal and CEO of Norwest Pro-ductionsColin Stevenson – Audio Producer, InternationalBroadcast CeremoniesJohn Simpson – Assistant Audio DirectorSteve Law – Project Manager and FOH Audio EngineerMike Smith – Senior Audio Director, BroadcastIan Baldwin – Assistant Project Manager & SeniorSystem EngineerIan Shapcott – Monitor Engineer

Tony Szabo – Control Room System EngineerRandy Fransz – Speaker System EngineerPeter Wood – Audio Stage ManagerPeter Twartz – Radio Microphone & IEM SystemEngineerSteve Logan – Fairlight EngineerKeith Prestidge – Klotz System Engineer

Ground Speaker System:46 x EAW KF860/861 Virtual Line Arrays in 23 clusters of two,powered by Crest 8001 and CA9 amps and processed by XTADP226 using XTA’s Audiocore control software running ‘fault-lessly’ via RS485 over 1.3km.

North & South Upper Grandstand Speaker System:24 x EAW KF750 (four clusters each, two wide and three deepflown above the roof as stereo L/R) powered by CrownVZ5002 and VZ2402 with Pip II cards using Crown IQethernet network.

East & West Upper Grandstand Speaker System:32 x EAW KF750 (flown as 16 clusters of two on their sidesusing custom Norwest-designed rigging) powered by CrownVZ5002 and VZ2402 with Pip II cards using Crown IQ.The house delay line consisting of five Bose 9702s per sideplus a third (Norwest supplied) line of delay comprisingseven Zeck T-3 cabinets per side. The latter were powered byCrown VZ2402’s with Pip II cards using Crown IQ.

Monitors:20 x EAW SM200ih wedges8 x Zeck T-320 x IEMs – a combination of Shure PSM600 & PSM700,plus a few Sennheisers.FM system (on an especially licensed FM frequency) for bulkin-ear monitoring for horse riders, tap dancers and variouscast members and stage managers. There were a total of justunder 1,000 units.

Control2 x Midas Heritage 3000/48 consoles1 x Midas XL-3 (monitors)2 x Mackie CFX20 sidecars

Processing includes:Klark Teknik DN360sdbx 160SL (main system compressors)dbx 566 Tube Compressors (insert on FOH)dbx 1046 quad compressors (Inserts FOH & Mons)Drawmer DS201 gatesLexicon 480L, TC M5000, Eventide H3000, Yamaha SPX990effects

Microphones:Comprehensive array of Audio Technica microphones(including 4050, 4051, 4047, 4041 and 3525 mics) fororchestra mic-up.All radio microphones were Shure U1 series with Beta 87capsules.Headsets were DPA into Shure U1 beltpacks

Principal Opening Ceremony Personnel were:

demands. So, if things went horribly wrong, I could reset all the faders at zero andyou’d have the mix.

On the night, everything went like clockwork… literally. It was the first time we’dactually started the show as planned, which was established via timecode from SOBOwhich, in turn, was locked to Greenwich Meantime – so I was able to offset mymachine exactly. So the first cue went automatically off the clock – the wholeceremony started automatically from the Fairlight locked to time of day.

Aussie Gold Medal PerformanceIn all my years of covering live events I’ve never witnessed such camaraderie betweenthe people staging it. Dozens of Australian engineers from otherwise competing soundcompanies joined forces to pull-off an awesome event, while even the relationsbetween FOH and broadcast (traditionally a frosty liaison at best) was incredibly co-operative. In the end, my only regret was not being able to include the input of moreof the engineers and producers responsible. Undoubtedly the opening ceremonyserved to bringing a nation together and those responsible should certainly becommended. It remains the jewel in the crown of an overwhelmingly satisfyingOlympic experience.

Thanks to Bruce Jackson and Steve Logan for their photographic expertise.

Bruce Jackson (foreground) and John Simpson.

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