A complete facility upgrade - which included the sound system - was required by the International Biathlon Union to conform with the latest technical requirements, and enable the Centre to host this year's 46th World Biathlon Championships.
Installation companies Avintel and High Tech Security were responsible for carrying out the technological upgrade, with QSC's proprietary Q-Sys audio signal processing and transmission components supplied by Mixart Distribution, their exclusive distributor in the Russian Federation.
The audio has been placed on a fully-redundant Q-Sys platform and comprises two Core 1000 64 x 64 hubs and 12 I/O Frame modules (with full redundancy provided in the back-up network in the event of faults).
Each I/O Frame houses up to four Mic/Line and AES-EBU I/O cards, enabling up to 16 channels of input and/or output in a single unit, and the connections to be physically located near their sources and destinations; at the same time dual Gigabit Ethernet connections route the audio signals through the Core for processing.
Q-Sys is fed over AES-EBU across the site from an Allen & Heath iLive digital mixing system, which provides full mixing of various sources (such as wireless systems and MD players), and Q-Sys performs distribution and processing of all the output signals.
Vladimir Sedenko, director for business development, High Tech Security, said, "Deployment of the new sound system at Nordic Ski Centre in Khanty-Mansiysk was a large scale and high responsibility project. We had to arrange distribution and transmission of audio signals across the large multi-zone territory of The Centre, with low latency and undamaged sound quality, and ensure protection from both system and network errors. Full redundancy was crucial because the Centre hosts international competitions.
"The Q-Sys platform allowed us to complete both tasks successfully. We were aware that Q-Sys is new to the Russian market, but Mixart, QSC's Russian distributor, provided us with comprehensive consultancy and support which persuaded us to choose this solution. And we have never regretted that decision."
(Jim Evans)
