PRESS RELEASE FROM AUDIO-VISUAL LAND
September 1998
KUALA LUMPUR 98 - XVI COMMONWEALTH GAMES
OPENING AND CLOSING CEREMONIES
The Kuala Lumpur 98 XVI Commonwealth Games will be held from the 11th September 1998 to 21st September 1998 in Malaysia. Audio- Visual Land has the privilege and the honor of being appointed the Sound Reinforcement Supplier for the Games. For eleven exciting days, Audio-Visual Land will provide a state-of-the-art, processor-based Apogee Loudspeaker system for the more than 100,000 seating capacity National Stadium at Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as portable sound systems at designated venues for sound reinforcement requirements.
Together with Apogee Sound Inc. of the USA, Audio-Visual Land employed computer simulated acoustic models of the stadium using data derived from supplied blue prints, written and verbal data. The software program EASE was used to create the drawings and acoustic models of the stadium. From these models, the appropriate Apogee loudspeakers were selected for the venue based on general performance specifications supplied to us.
At the National Stadium Bukit Jalil, a distributed system consisting of a total of thirty-one Apogee 3x3's and eight AE-12s2 sub-woofers were selected to provide coverage to the first tier or lower seating area. A pair of AE-6B stage monitors were positioned at the VVIP seating area, carefully tuned for speech intelligibility and musicality. Four compact Apogee SSM's were also placed in the Royalty Box behind the VVIP area. Nine 3x3's were strategically positioned facing the field acting as monitors for participants performing on the field while sixteen AE-6B wedge-shaped loudspeakers provided ample monitor coverage on three unique stages constructed in the shape of ethnic drums. A pair of 3x3's and two AE-15 sub-woofers were employed on each side of the stage. Sound reinforcement on the 2nd tier was amply provided by twenty-four Apogee AE-5's together with eight AE-6B's and four AE-3's. These speakers were mounted on custom-made stanchions adjustable for swivel and tilt necessary to achieve the ideal focus angle.
An advanced equalization technique known as Apogee CORREQT was employed to tune the entire set-up at National Stadium. Mr. Bill Daly, a CORREQT engineer was specially flown in to equalize the Apogee system using a high precision dual-channel FFT analyzer from Hewlett-Packard and a specially Apogee-designed routing switch. Measurements were taken with B&K 4007 mics, and compensations were made using parametric equalizers. Mr. Bill Daly came fully qualified having been involved in large-scale, prestigious projects like the Atlanta Olympic Games stadium, the G-8 Summit in Denver, the Golden Globes Awards and more recently, the Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy game shows. Mr. Daly used CORREQT technique to fully optimize the system in a naturally reverberant & reflective acoustic environment, the results of which one must listen to, to believe.
Control of the entire system was channeled through the YAMAHA PM4000 professional mixing console with 48 input mainframes and 8 primary mixing busses. A separate 44 channel YAMAHA PM 4000M mixing console was used for the stage monitor mix. The complex acoustic environment of the stadium necessitated accurate time alignment and delay. As such, the sound engineer deployed YAMAHA D1030 to do the job. For effects, several units of the ever popular YAMAHA SPX 990's were deployed.
Having completed testing, tuning and time aligning, a jubilant Bill Daly exclaimed "PAU", which means 'done!' in Hawaii where he resides.
