The Tech of the AFL Grand Final

Ahead of the AFL Grand Final this Saturday, we thought we’d take a look at what we really care about on Saturday – the tech at the stadium!

First to the home of the 2021 Grand Final, Optus Stadium. Much hoo-ha has been made of the external architectural lightshow, but back in 2018, when the new PA was installed, the almost 500 loudspeaker Nexo line array and point source rig, supplemented by 500 other speakers, was the biggest stadium PA in Australia.

Australian Nexo distributor Group Technologies designed the PA, and the install was handled by Rutledge AV, shortly before it became Diversified. The stadium is “The Most Beautiful Sports Facility in the World”, according to the judges of the Prix Versailles 2019 international architecture awards. It also won the 2019 Australia’s Best Stadium award (https://www.austadiums.com/awards/).

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On the day, the lucky fans who get in the door are going to be rocked by eighteen hangs of 12 Nexo GEO S12 line arrays elements, each supplemented by three LS18 subs. Those in the under balcony areas will be covered by 200 Nexo ID24 dual 4” cabinets. The whole box and dice runs off Nexo NXAMPs and a Dante network, with QSC’s Q-SYS handling zone control and monitoring.

“Developing a world class solution for such a prestigious project required a particularly high level of engineering and design,” says Group Technologies General Manager Anthony Touma. “We worked tirelessly to ensure not only the best audio performance but also an elegant rigging solution that suited the aesthetics of the stadium. These fantastic awards are a great honour and testament to both our very hardworking team and all involved.”

For more on the system at Optus Stadium, have a chat with Group Technologies- grouptechnologies.com.au

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Meanwhile, the MCG will sit empty on the One Big Day in September for the second year running. When its PA was refreshed in 2019, it took the mantle of ‘Australia’s Biggest Stadium PA’ and brought it home to Melbourne. Much technical ink has been spilled on the gigantic Auditoria-designed and Diversified -installed d&b audiotechnik deployment, powered by two DiGiCo 4REA4 mix engines and an SD9, and administered over Q-LAN by Q-SYS, however the glue joining it all together is the less celebrated but equally important Optocore fibre system.

With multiple connectivity requirements, including MADI, AES, and Q-LAN, and the need to have mobile DiGiCo SD Racks patched in three different points around the stadium and simply appear on the SD9 as I/O, Optocore was the only tool for the job. The massive fibre backbone carries 504 channels of DiGiCo I/O alone, plus audio for the video screens.

A particularly clever late-breaking addition was Optocore’s AutoRouter, an intelligent patch bay that senses when a device is turned on or off, and will add or remove it from the Optocore ring network accordingly. This meant a tech could take an SD Rack to one of the remote locations, plug it on, turn it on, and have it linked redundantly to the entire system, including the desk, without any other action.

And why is this topical? Optocore recently announced a new distribution partner for Australia; CMI Music & Audio. They’re now carrying and supporting the full Optocore range, so get in touch with the Audio team for any Optocore enquiries – cmi.com.au