Stagetec centre stage at Eurovision

Germany: 25 finalists, 40 networks, 120m viewers across Europe, and some of the most outrageously nepotistic voting patterns you will ever witness…It can only be the Eurovision Song Contest, this year staged to spectacular effect in Dusseldorf, with German public broadcaster NDR relying on Stagetec Aurus consoles for the international sound feed.

Four large scale Aurus consoles provided the 5.1 and stereo international sound feed: “As ‘official supplier’ and partner of German public broadcaster NDR, Stagetec provided all the mixing consoles used to broadcast this year’s contest,” says Dr Klaus-Peter Scholz, Managing Director of Stagetec Berlin.

All four Aurus consoles with 48 faders and a full complement of DSP were on site; three installed in mobile control rooms NDR had set up on the Esprit Arena campus, the fourth in one of NDR’s HD outside broadcast trucks. Two of the four sound control rooms undertook all mixing of the broadcast sound: the first did the music mix and passesd its output to the second which produced the international sound feed. The third and fourth sound control rooms acted purely as backups, able to take over seamlessly in case of any failure of the main system.

Each control room had its own Nexus network to allow it to operate independently of the other Nexus networks. However, the four Nexus systems also exchanged their audio data via MADI to form a single audio network for the entire TV compound. “The whole installation is planned for maximum reliability by NDR,” commented Dr. Scholz.