Atlanta, GA (February 19, 2016)—Equal parts worship conference and music event, Passion 2016, held in January, was a unique event held simultaneously in three venues over the course of three days. Delivering worship sessions, speakers and praise music, pastor Louie Giglio, the event’s founder, and musicians such as Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Crowder, Kristian Stanfill, Hillsong United and Rend Collective cycled through Philips Arena in downtown Atlanta (seen above); Infinite Energy Arena in Gwinnett County, GA; and Toyota Center in Houston, TX to provide the same experience for every attendee.
With the same lineup of musicians performing at each arena, production provider Rat Sound Systems (Camarillo, CA) supplied the same complement of DiGiCo consoles, with DiGiGrid servers at FOH and monitors, plus identical control, wired and wireless microphone, and IEM packages, at each locations. Rat Sound, working for the third time on the design and implementation of production sound for the annual Passion Conference, also provided nearly identical L-Acoustics K1/K2 PA system packages, scaled appropriately for each venue.
Each arena featured an SD7 at front-of-house and at monitors with a third SD7 located at a backstage broadcast position where the web feed was mixed. The three desks were linked by an Optocore network, with fiber running to each console from one of four interconnected DiGiCo SD-Racks positioned at monitor world and back to an adjacent SD-Rack, providing redundancy through the closed-loop configuration.
Philips Arena acted as the hub of an 800-mile-plus fiber network between the three venues, allowing pastors at each site to converse and interact with each other via DPA headsets and IMAG video screens. A DiGiCo SD-Mini Rack located in the outside broadcast production truck, and supplied to each venue by TNDV of Nashville, enabled operators to switch broadcast or FOH audio with the live video of speakers and musicians being transmitted between locations. Each OB truck’s SD-Mini Rack was looped through a DD4 fiber-to-MADI converter feeding the Riedel MediorNet-enabled HD-SDI link, incorporating 16 channels of embedded audio, between the venues.
The two Georgia venues were configured in-the-round, with Houston presented in an end-stage layout. Rat Sound’s key PA tech, Andrew Gilchrist, designed the L-Acoustics systems at all three venues. Philips Arena included eight hangs comprising a total of 41 L-Acoustics K1 and 60 K2 cabinets, Infinite Energy Center included six hangs of 18 K1 and 59 K2 boxes, and at Toyota Center, there were four hangs of 28 K1 and 44 K2. Each rig also featured eight ARCS and 12 Kara plus two-dozen SB28 subs.
Passion 2016
www.268generation.com
Rat Sound
www.ratsound.com
Method Production Group
www.methodpg.com
DiGiCo
www.DiGiCo.biz
