The Brief

In addition to the Opening and Closing Ceremonies audio systems, Norwest Productions also won the tender to supply the audio equipment for the technical overlay, and vision, lighting, audio control and technicians for the creative sports presentation for all the sporting venues used during the Commonwealth Games. These two separate contracts, to Sports Technology and Great Big events respectively, saw us providing all technical services with the exception of communications systems, timing screens and architectural lighting for all sporting venues, not only on the Gold Coast but as far away as Townsville in Far North Queensland.

The encompassing brief across both contracts was to provide exceptionally high intelligibility for announcers, in addition to the full-frequency, high-impact audio requirement of play-on and off stings common to modern sports presentation.

Solution

This contract saw us purchasing around another 200 smaller format L-acoustics speakers, including Kiva II, Arcs WiFo, SB15/18, X8, 5XT and associated amps and hardware. Again, the result was superb. Combining with our existing inventory of dV-Dosc, Kudo, 12XT, we were able to deliver almost all games systems as a single-brand solution, with the exception of some application-specific paging systems. We also purchased a large amount of Yamaha QL series consoles, Shure ULXD Radio mics were employed alongside the ever-reliable Sennheiser in-ear monitor systems to complete the sports audio packages. Lighting systems were largely based around our inventory Martin lighting fixtures and control.

Outcome

When Gold Coast won the right to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games, we knew we had to be there. Norwest has had a Queensland office since 2002, so this job was in our backyard.

Norwest’s foresight, along with their design and engineering knowledge and a lot of hard work paid off, with the company winning the hotly contested contract to supply the audio for both the Sporting Venues and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. The end result of the event was superb, with great reports coming from all quarters.