The city of Sierra Madre's award-winning float (credit: Jose Ybarra)
Rat Sound Systems deploys SD10 digital console at 125th Rose Parade on New Year’s Day
PASADENA, CA – January 2014 – First established as the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1, 1890, “America’s New Year Celebration” this year featured 45 floats, 16 equestrian units plus numerous marching bands, all led by 2014 Grand Marshall Vin Scully, the Hall of Fame broadcaster. Officially titled the
Rose Parade presented by Honda
since 2011, the two-hour procession is typically watched by as many as 700,000 people along its 5.5-mile route through Pasadena, CA, where it runs mainly along Colorado Boulevard.
All of the signals from the parade floats (outfitted with wireless audio – six in all), including NBC’s
The Voice
float, were mixed and routed through a DiGiCo SD10 digital console and fed to the audience PA at the start of the parade route as well as also being sent as a broadcaster pool feed. This year the parade was broadcast live in the US on nine TV stations, including ABC, NBC and Los Angeles station KTLA5, as well as reached tens of millions of viewers worldwide via eight international networks, and was streamed live over a variety of internet platforms.
The DiGiCo SD10 ready for action at the 125th annual Rose Parade
Stephan continues, “I’m spoiled, because Steve McNeil at MacWestGroup, DiGiCo’s rep in Long Beach, CA, is a friend of mine. He’s brought the console out on a lot of the gigs that we’ve done. I’ve always been blown away by how they sound; they really sound great. I love DiGiCo boards – they’re awesome.”
The SD10’s fiber connectivity was critical. According to Jamie Harris, Rat Sound’s local events account manager, two 150m fiber lines were run to local host broadcaster KTLA’s engineers. “We had originally discussed using another console with a separate modular I/O junction at the base of the grandstand to run audio 380 feet to the broadcast truck and feed a hard line under Colorado as a backup to the PA’s RF sends that were sent directly from the console,” Harris recalls. “However, we gladly changed to the SD10 to use fiber giving us the flexibility to send and receive to and from the broadcast truck as well as remove the junction and the analog run to the truck that would be ripe for noise and ground faults.”
Ivan Ortiz, Rat Sound’s A1 on the show, ran the SD10 at 96 kHz, mixing inputs including announcer wireless mics, float wireless audio and crowd mics, which were then distributed from the 56×24 MADI Rack to the PA covering the seating below the front of house position and to an SD-Rack 56×24 to provide outputs and mix minus mixes to KTLA engineers. “Having the SD10 at FOH gave me plenty of flexibility to deal with the performers’ mics being used in front of the PA for the grandstand performance, with plenty of graphic EQs and compression available, and routing to either local or remote locations,” says Ortiz.
Rose Bowl-winning MSU Spartans' float and band (credit: Mary Platt)
The input list totaled 32 signals, says Ortiz. “All channels were doubled according to their respective layer, either PA or broadcast. I also used local AES I/O on the SD10 for a 360 Systems Instant Replay and playback rack.” Due to the distance between FOH and the remote truck, he adds, fiber was the most reliable choice for signal transport. “Also, having fiber in between two different audio sources not sharing the same power solved the problem of ground issues or buzzing when interfaced together.”
About DiGiCo
DiGiCo is a UK-based manufacturer of some of the world’s most popular, successful and ground-breaking digital mixing consoles for the live, theatre, broadcast and post production industries and is exclusively distributed in the US by Group One Ltd. of Farmingdale, New York. For more information, go to:
