With an expected TV audience of around 125m accompanying the live audience at the Malmö Arena, the 58th Eurovision Song Contest – the world’s largest live music contest – is a showcase for the event’s official technical equipment provider, Sennheiser.
To serve the 2013 event that will be broadcast from Malmö – a ‘somewhat smaller but finer contest that focuses more on the music itself’ – Sennheiser will work closely with Markus Müller (MM Communications), who will preconfigure and supply the wireless systems. For the first time, Digital 9000 systems will be used for the semi-finals (on 14 and 16 May) as well as for the Grand Final (18 May).
Jonas Næsby, RF specialist at Sennheiser Nordic, will be present at the arena to provide the event with support in operating the RF equipment.
The specified 96-channel wireless microphone system will use 40 transmitters and around 160 receivers from the Sennheiser 2000 series, and will come from MM Communications’ Berlin offices, as well as another eight wireless systems that will be used for broadcasting from the press centre.
‘The quality of the new Sennheiser systems is just incredible,’ says Markus Müller. ‘Digital 9000 is linear in operation – the transmission quality is as good as in a wired system. As far as I know, the system is currently the only digital wireless solution worldwide that transmits audio signals without any sound losses.’
Müller and his team gained their first practical experience of the microphone system at ESC 2012 in Baku, where, a test system was operated in parallel to the wireless systems from the 3000/5000 series that were used for the show. ‘For me, the new EM 9046 receiver is a worthy successor to the EM 1046,’ Mülle says.
Before finally purchasing the equipment, the rental company put the system through rigorous testing. One focus was on the two transmission modes: High-Definition mode with completely uncompressed audio transmission and Long-Range mode with a codec to extend the range under difficult transmission conditions.
‘Both modes function perfectly and are both highly impressive with their individual ranges,’ Müller reports. ‘HD mode is certainly superior in terms of audio quality in technical measurements, although the differences are barely audible in live situations. The main distinction between the two modes is in their range. At full definition in HD mode, we have achieved a range of up to 250m in tests without any loss of audio quality, which is impressive even when directly compared with analogue wireless systems. In Long-Range mode, we were easily able to cover 800m, and we actually ended the test at that point because such a distance is more than sufficient for any kind of application. We measured these figures for a single channel, and we expect ranges to be somewhat shorter in complex RF environments.’
‘We are extremely pleased with the trustful cooperation with MM Communications,’ says Dr Heinrich Esser, President Professional Systems at Sennheiser. ‘The perfectly configured system is already in operation at the Malmö Arena. Passion for perfect sound can be seen in every part of the world’s biggest live music event, and with the new Digital 9000 series, the Eurovision Song Contest has set a new benchmark for sound quality.’
More: www.sennheiser.com
