The 2010 Olympics was the first Olympics to have its opening ceremony held indoors. Dante was used in six Lab.gruppen PLM10000Qs as Dante transmitters, three transmitting the six main audio signals, three others transmitting the same six signals for redundancy. The signals were distributed via Dante to 104 Lab.gruppen PLM10000Q/PLM14000 amplifiers mounted on trusses in the air, all receiving the Dante signals via a fibre optic Ethernet network.
Featured acts at the opening ceremony included K.D Lang, Bryan Adams and Nelly Furtado. Audinate's Dante networking delivered low latency uncompressed audio over a standard IP Ethernet network with sample accurate synchronization. The PLM amplifiers were driving a total of 96 Clair i-5 speaker cabinets and 96 Clair i-3 speaker cabinets arranged in two concentric rings to cover the entire Vancouver dome. The whole system was used during the opening and closing ceremonies, and part of the system was used during the medal ceremonies. All 104 Dante enabled PLMs in the air received each audio signal through five paths for maximum redundancy. In total, two million watts of amplification were transmitted over standard gigabit switches.
(Jim Evans)
