At the end of September, Pope Francis kicked off his four day Baltic tour, which included Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, with a Holy Mass in Sàntakos Park in Kaunas, Lithuania. The event attracted over 100,000 faithful to the park where local rental company NGR Service provided an extensive sound system, deploying two DiGiCo SD12 desks for the live mix, as well as the broadcast and press feeds.
“NGR was chosen for this important event because of the quality of its equipment, of which DiGiCo is an important part, and its exemplary service,” says Ramūnas Alenskas from DiGiCo’s Lithuanian distributor, Sonus, which supported NGR with additional stage boxes and cabling. “They used the two DiGiCo SD12s along with two SD-Racks, a D2-Rack and an SD-Mini Rack, which were deployed for their sound quality and their ability to connect to all six racks in fully redundant mode.”
NGR owner Valdemaras Karpuška was Sound Director for the event, with Tomas Ždanovičius manning the FOH position and producing all the sound system designs.
“For the show, we had two stages—the main stage was just used for speeches, so the SD-Mini Rack was employed for the connection of 16 microphones,” explains Karpuška. “For the orchestra/chorus stage, we had a total of 54 inputs for main program, which comprised 86 musicians and more than 300 singers plus two soloists, as well as 60 outputs provided for the OB truck to mix the live broadcast. In addition, we had an extra 20 channels in the input list for the band that was playing from 5am to 10am as a warm-up performance before the Pope came to the park. In total, we had 92 input channels for the Pope visit show.”
Digico Pope FOH Engineer Tomas Ždanovičius at the DiGiCo SD12 desk pair.
The DiGiCo system included a DMI-MADI-B and DMI-MADI-C card installed in each of SD12s. On the main stage, the SD12 DMI-1 (with DMI-MADI-B) was connected to the SD-Mini Rack’s main connection. This was mirrored to the second SD12’s DMI-1 (with DMI-MADI-B) to the SD-Mini Rack’s Aux, which allowed for full audio and control link on both SD12s for the main stage.
For the Orchestra/Chorus stage, the two SD-Racks were connected to the SD12’s local MADI via BNC MADI snakes with SD-Rack 1’s main connected to the main SD12 MADI 1, with the Aux to mirror the SD12 MADI 1 and SD-Rack 2’s main connected to the main of SD12 MADI 2, with the Aux again mirroring SD12 MADI 2. Finally, the D2-Rack was connected via two Cat6 cables, with the main going to the main of SD12 DMI-2 (with DMI-MADI-C) and the Aux to mirror SD12 DMI-2 (with DMI-MADI-C). Both DiGiCo SD12 consoles were linked together with Cat5 cable to be able to mirror the main SD12.
“It was extremely helpful to be able to distribute the stage racks in a few locations, and the easy setup, fast programming, and user-friendly interface of the SD12s really was the key to successful preparation for such a huge project,” says Alenskas.
Digico Pope The NGR audio team onsite in Kaunas, Lithuania.
“But, bearing in mind the importance of the event, being able to have a fully redundant system, where we could mirror the two consoles and stage racks, played a key role in us choosing DiGiCo for this event.”
“DiGiCo’s James Bradley was with us on preparation and event day,” concludes Alenskas. “Having James with us before the event and on the field was invaluable and is a great example of DiGiCo’s outstanding support. We are delighted to report that the organizers were more than happy with the result.”
