Berlin, Germany (October 12, 2011)—When Pope Benedict XVI visited Berlin on September 22-23, he celebrated the Mass with 61,000 followers in the Olympic Stadium.
To ensure that not a word spoken by the Pope, who has a relatively quiet voice, was lost in the giant, 56,000-square-metre, oval stadium, sound reinforcement equipment from Electro-Voice was used.
In addition to the 171 Electro-Voice XLC enclosures already installed, a multitude of additional EV array elements were deployed for the occasion. These included 104 XLD181, 40 X-Line Xvls and Xvlts (main in- and out-hangs), as well as 60 XLE181 enclosures on a delay line.
The system was powered by Electro-Voice amplifiers—in addition to the 90 P3000RL power amplifiers of the stadium system, a further 80 TG7 amplifiers were used for the event. A half-dozen NetMax N8000-1500 loudspeaker controllers provided the system control via an Optocore network (divided into three redundant circuits).
The production team had only three days for the installation, tuning and sound check with the 800-voice choir, which made for an extremely tight schedule, given the magnitude of the event and the level of expectation!
“It was naturally a great honor and a joy for us to be able to contribute to this moving event,” commented Robert Hesse, Vice President Sales Communication EMEA of Bosch Communications Systems and Managing Director of EVI Audio. “It was also extremely gratifying to hear and see how magnificently our systems mastered the quite extraordinary tasks assigned to them. No one watching the live broadcast on television can have missed the X-Line array, as the broadcast director was clearly taken with its undeniable visual elegance. We, at any rate, were delighted by the shots seen on TV, which million of spectators followed.”
Electro-Voice
www.electrovoice.com
