Extreme Innovation

Audio reinforcement for large trackside sporting events presents a unique challenge: courses over hundreds of metres can stretch to kilometres and that usually means hundreds of speaker boxes! Now in its 20th year, Australia’s premiere cycling event, The Santos Tour Down Under (TDU) in South Australia has traditionally employed large numbers of 100V line horns to get coverage, using up to 100 bullhorns on some circuits.

For 2019, TDU organisers changed suppliers and Novatech Creative Event Technology took a clever left-of-field approach and went with quality over quantity. Novatech deployed 24 x L-Acoustics Syva colinear line source loudspeakers for the main area and another 24 L-Acoustics Kara modular line source units for infill. Essentially, these upmarket indoor boxes were used for an application normally serviced by more meat ‘n’ potato technology. Although utilised beyond their intended design parameters, the L-Acoustics speakers and supporting backbone were a roaring success for all involved.

CLEVER SPEAKER SOLUTION

Novatech worked with L-Acoustics and the supplier Jands to design a solution consisting of a Syva every 30 to 50 metres on the four main straights of the course. The wide 140° dispersion angle and excellent full range throw (from 50 up to 75 metres in places) of these units allowed total coverage for 200 metres either side of each starting position and a full 400 metres either side of the finish line.

Full range Kara boxes filled in around the sharp corners of the criterium stage on a couple of days and were stacked either side of stage for a podium presentation PA when required.

L-Acoustics LA-RAKs housed LA4X and LA12X amplifiers to power the Syva and Kara speakers. A full fibre backbone distributed all audio, vision, control and monitoring over the entire course, delivering audio via AVB-over-Ethernet and video using Riedel’s MediorNet. To make this easy, Novatech created custom cabling with links to multiple drop points and a single trunk back to central control and the amp racks.

A cool feature of these L-Acoustics amps is built-in cable length compensation which will send optimal signal to each speaker. From here, each cabinet had a unique delay dialled in – a first for the TDU event. Delays were set to optimise sync and clarity all over the listening area, particularly when near the large LED screens. Much of this was pre-mapped with L-Acoustics Soundvision software but refined in real time on site.

Novatech’s PA configuration featured a traditional FOH setup for overall control but importantly gave their system tech the ability to roam with a wireless tablet and update individual speakers on the fly. It meant they could isolate and mute one cabinet whenever a TV interview happened in front of it, leaving the rest of the array broadcasting to the remainder of the course, not to mention being able to move around the whole course and tweak system dynamics on the fly.