Singapore celebrated its 59th anniversary this year with traditional displays from the military, fly pasts and many extraordinary performances. Lucky audience members who managed to get a ticket could watch from the arena, but the events were also broadcast live, streamed online and displayed on large screens across Singapore.

Independence Day festivities are held in the Padang, Malay for field, outside the former City Hall and the site has special historical significance, being the venue for the inauguration of Yusof Ishak and many National Day Parades. There were huge fireworks displays and a host of supporting events to mark the occasion.

To ensure the event was not only heard by the people present, but also all those watching remotely, the team from Showtec International Pte Ltd designed a complex system including 10 PRODIGY units. Sound Chief, Danial Bober, and Patch Engineer, Hidayah Azman, headed up the audio team, with onsite support from Brian Ong, Sales Manager for Broadcast Communications International Pte Ltd and Eugene Ng, Audio Engineer for Audiotonic.

“Both the PRODIGY.MP and .MX are very powerful tools once you understand and make full use of the various functions they offer,” explained Hidayah. “I particularly liked the control and utility functions that the MP and MX provided, such as the custom layouts, trigger functions, MIDI controls and external monitoring port, which made my workflow much smoother. Signal routing, monitoring and redundancy switchovers have never been more efficient.”

Used in four distinct roles, loudspeaker management, playback redundancy, broadcast redundancy and router redundancy, the PRODIGY Series units were deployed across all areas of the audio system.

For the loudspeaker system, PRODIGY.MP controlled tuning and processing across each of the four zones across the Padang. The integration of Smaart V8 via the globcon plugin for the PRODIGY.MP enabled the capabilities of Rational Acoustics real-time acoustical measurement and analysis tool via API (Application Programming Interface). The measured values were then displayed as an overlay in the EQ plug-in of globcon and utilized for system tuning, making it an even faster and more intuitive task.

“The National Parade is an extremely important event,” said Brian Ong, Sales Manager for BCI. “The whole Nation watches every part, along the route, via live broadcast and online. Using PRODIGY.MX and .MP gives the audio team the peace of mind needed to concentrate on the parade, without being concerned about the performance of the equipment. For driving the PA and conversions, there is nothing more powerful on the market.”

For playback, the PRODIGY.MP provided rock solid back-up reliability, with EARS (Enhanced Automatic Redundancy Switching) to ensure the transition was seamless and instant. The team added a Frodes EXBOX.CTRL-MD for a more tactile control, enabling them to have a mechanical selection of main or backup signals.

“The PRODIGY.MP manages several complex tasks in the audio chain without any issues,” observed Danial Bober. “It is a powerful tool for conversions and an intuitive back-up that can switch seamlessly if there are any failures. In a situation like the National Day Parade, where it is absolutely critical that there are no interruptions, DirectOut can be relied upon 100%.”

The broadcast redundancy included television broadcast and local relay to the large screens across the city. Three PRODIGY.MP and a single PRODIGY.MC were used to provide redundant signal distribution and connect the front of house, commentary and outside broadcast positions. Two PRODIGY.MX units were also deployed as router redundancy to guarantee the entire system ran smoothly.

The units synchronized sample rates and clocking across the MADI and Dante network with Auto FastSRC. Ravenna Audio over IP (AoIP) was adopted for additional feeds, and Ravenna’s interoperability was also exploited for local connectivity to external devices, utilizing digital to analog conversions and MADI to Dante conversions for ultimate accessibility to all audio formats.

“Having all my custom layouts and switchover triggers programmable to a controller has helped me a lot, especially when I need to monitor the whole PRODIGY system from a single screen,” said Hidayah. “The built-in headphone monitoring function on the .MX was also very useful when troubleshooting incoming lines from other .MP units. Being able to listen to every input from every audio stream made my workflow even more efficient.”

“Investing in further PRODIGY.MX was a logical step for Showtec,” concluded Danial Bober. “We have used the equipment for a variety of applications and had very good results every time. We have a great relationship with BCI (Broadcast Communications International) and the support they offer us is always excellent.”

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