Over 16,000 people attended the 40th anniversary concert of the Orchestre
Nationale de Lille (ONL) in July. It was the first time the orchestra had performed in
the impressive Pierre-Mauroy stadium just outside Lille, usually reserved for
premiership football matches; however, the stadium’s extraordinary design in which
the northern half of the pitch lifts up and slides over the southern half to reveal a
“showcase’ arena for concerts and indoor sporting competitions complete with
terraced seating below pitch level, provided the perfect venue for this momentous
occasion. Indeed, the event ticked off a number of “firsts’; the first time for the
ONL in the venue which is the first of its kind in Europe, and the first time that a full
RAVENNA digital network has been deployed on a live event of this scale.

“It was an impressive setup,’ recalled digital audio specialist Fred Blanc-Garin, who
was there on behalf of the ONL. “We essentially brought in the ONL’s recently
installed digital studio setup that now features a RAVENNA network, but we had to
supplement it with additional material.’

In total there were two Lawo mc256 consoles: the first at FoH operated by
experienced engineer and ONL veteran, Francois Gabert, who was also managing
monitors from FoH, and the second console from Paris-based live audio recording
specialists, Yasta, in a separate room for audio capture for recording and broadcast.
The recording console was set up and operated by Delphine Hannotin from INA.

For the 100-piece orchestra and 200-strong choir the ONL team deployed a total of
78 digital microphones on stage, which meant that ten Neumann DMI-8 interfaces
equipped with RAVENNA cards were required. Once collected by the DMIs, the
microphone signals were packed into RAVENNA multicast streams and sent to a
network switch where the streams were automatically duplicated. One set of
streams was received by the FoH console and the second went to the broadcast
console, and then on again to the Pyramix DAW.

“It was the first time any of us had set up an event of this scale using RAVENNA
technology which needed to demonstrate flawless interoperability between
equipment from several different manufacturers,’ explained Blanc-Garin. “As such,
it was a lot of work (we expected that) but we were lucky to have first-class
support from all concerned, especially Lawo and Neumann. The results were worth
every second of the time invested – on the night everything worked perfectly and
we all had huge smiles on our faces, from the technicians to the musicians and of
course the audience. No other networking technology can offer this level of
performance and scalability, and I’m convinced we’ve set the standard for the
future.’