Polish singer songwriter Dawid Podsiadło’s 360° arena and stadium tour is the largest to ever take place in his native country, including a performance at the 41,620-capacity Polsat Plus Arena in Gdańsk. With sound engineer, Bartosz ‘Bartek’ Kurkowski at the helm, Optocore’s M8 Madi device is at the heart of a playback that runs additional tracks, clicks, cues and time code at both FOH and monitors using a DiGiCo loop.
‘I decided to use Madi for this set-up to give maximum flexibility, in case we needed to expand track count in the future,’ Bartek says, explaining the underlying reasons for adopting the M8
The challenge, he says, was to incorporate Madi streams into the Optocore loop – the M8 Madi switch can do precisely that, providing four Madi input and four Madi output ports, offering 256 digital audio I/O capacity on coaxial or fibre Madi.
Bartek was duly introduced to dealer Audio Rebel, where he was to meet former Optocore man, Dawid Somlo, who responded to the tight deadlines by first demoing the larger M12, before realising that the M8’s capacity would be sufficient for the production’s needs. ‘It was only after to switching to a digital playback solution and deciding that Madi would be a suitable format, that we started searching for ways to incorporate it into an Optocore loop,’ Bartek says.
The FOH desk set-up comprised a pair of DiGiCo Quantum 338s in mirror configuration at FOH (with additional UAD racks for extra processing), two DiGiCo SD9s on monitors (also mirrored), two DiGiCo SD racks, with the M8 providing Madi streams in the Optocore loop. Production then used DirectOut’s ExBox BLDS as a Madi switcher between their two redundant Ableton playback set-ups.
Bartek reports the playback system rock solid: ‘Switching between two Ableton rigs was absolutely seamless, no audio artefacts whatsoever.’
Likewise, Optocore’s M8 enabled integration of the Madi playback system with the existing Optocore loop. ‘This greatly improved the flexibility of the system and made it failure proof with the help of DirectOut’s ExBox device. The two devices together really changed the game for us and made it so easy to develop further in the future.’
Bartek adds that during multiple crash simulations, the time code kept running with no interruptions on lighting consoles. ‘The system is super flexible, allowing us to add additional tracks in a matter of minutes in case we needed to, and it is also future proof. We are really happy with the outcome so I’m now keen to recommend more systems of that kind to other bands or organisations.’
More: www.optocore.com
