AVIA2019: Exceptional Innovation Award

Novatech Creative Event Technology – Tour Down Under

Right from their inception, the AVIAs have been about recognising innovation and excellence in the AV industry. While every project submitted for an award exhibits innovation in its design and execution, the judges look carefully each year among the projects entered for one that exemplifies that truly ground-breaking innovation that will change the way the industry will solve problems in the future. 

Since the AVIAs began back in 2009, very few projects have attracted the judges’ attention sufficiently to warrant making an award for Exceptional Innovation in AV, and consequently only a few awards have ever been made.

In 2019 one project stood head and shoulders above the pack in the simple, thoughtful, but radical way that it solved a long-standing problem for outdoor productions.

If you’re delivering the street-side event PA for a cycling tour that appears at two new locations – over 120 kilometres apart – every day, for seven days, it’s a considerable logistical problem to quickly and safely set-up, strike and relocate your PA system between venues.

In the past, the PA supplier for South Australia’s Tour Down Under had used access platforms to pre-rig an overhead set of everybody’s favourite Low-Fidelity 100 Volt metal-horn speakers at each venue, and then hooked them up when the race came to town.

The approach taken by Novatech Creative Event Technology which won them the 2019 Exceptional Innovation Award, was to use a ground-supported winched mounting system, based on tried-and true rigging hardware which was then safety-braced to South Australia’s famous steel and concrete Stobie power poles. 

The system allowed Novatech to set up its PA from scratch in 90 minutes at each new location, then bump it out in under an hour. The rigging system permitted the use of full-range low-impedance L-Acoustics Syva loudspeakers to deliver high-quality, time-aligned audio across the hundreds of meters of streets covered at each stage.

Not only does Novatech’s award-winning system simplify and expedite the rigging process, it completely removes an entire class of workplace health and safety risks for the crew and the public attending the event. 

This solution has become the standard for Events South Australia, and is already attracting wide attention in the event and PA worlds.

The 2019 AVIAs, proudly sponsored by Bose Pro