The 11th National Game for Persons with Disabilities & the 8th National Special Olympic Games, the PRC

Huahui Audio 2021-11-26

China – October 2021 - The 11th National Paralympic Games and the 8th National Special Olympics was held from October 22 to October 29 at the Xi'an Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium in Shaanxi, China. After 19 years, Shaanxi hosted the national Special Olympics Games again, and this is also the first time that the two events were held in the same region concurrently.

The opening ceremony included parade of competitors, dancing and musical performances. With the traditional flame lighting, over 4000 disabled athlete would be gping to write down their new story in this venue.

“I recognize and understand the burden that’s on my shoulders. This is the event of great significance. Not only to show the world the spirit of Chinese self-improvement, but also an important moment to make the dream come true and create our history.” said Tian XingXing, project director, “I have great admiration for athletes with disabilities, and their spirit of fighting for their dreams against all odds has always moved me and encouraged me. Therefore, I will do my best to perform the opening ceremony perfectly to all the audience.”

The creative team met for the first time in November last year in Beijing, and carried out several discussion meetings in Shaanxi this year, deliberating every detail of the opening ceremony over and over again. According to the program requirements of the director team and for the consideration of the environment, after repeated selection, L-Acoustics and DiGiCo were finally decided to choose as the sound reinforcement system for the event.

On the evening of the 22nd, the opening ceremony hightlighted the spirit of disabled performers, with three themes of Warmth, Self-improvement and Growth. No matter the performers' expressiveness, stage design, lighting, video display or audio system, they were all perfectly combined and integrated to create an immersive environment of "Common Dream".

For the main system, every hang of 20 speakers consisting of K1 and K2, hanging on the left and right sides above the stage, Ideally covering the stadium that can accommodate nearly 10,000 people. Wherever the audience in the front or the back, they can be well-immersive.

“Many sound engineers or if they are on site, they are not prefer having K1 deployed in the stadium, for its high energy and narrower horizontal directivity compared to K2, etc.," said Wu Tianjun, chief sound designer for the event, “But I think this is a misconception. We can analyse the data in Soundvision, to view the coverage and adjust in real time. A variety of solution can be adopted, after adjustment, K1 performed perfectly as the main this time.”

As the surround, two hangs of 15 speakers of KARA and K2 to deliver the sound for the performers and volunteers on stage. Four groups of K1 as the stage monitor and eight X8 distributed in front of the platform for monitoring.

In this event, SD5 was deployed as the PA console and SD5 Quantum was as the OB console, sharing the interface box in optic loop. In addition, an SD9 console was set up for playback.

DiGiCo console has a strong performance with high stablility and in such large-scale events. Its functionality can meet the requirement of multi-channel O/I, providing safe and flexible control with user-centered and practical design. SD9 is mainly responsible for all program music, compact but powerful, is the ideal solution for this kind of event.

“We have been using DiGiCo consoles for many years, I would use three words that start with S to describe them, Sustainable, Steady, Simple.”

—Wu Tianjun, Chief Sound Designer

Six LS10s were used for signal transmission for AVB network, AES as the back-up. Two P1s were for digital signal routing and conversion, effectively avoiding the attenuation of analog signal due to long distance.

“It was so exciting! I am very proud to see the opening ceremony presented so successfully and perfectly. I sincerely appreciate Wu and his team, and all hidden people for their hard work over the past 500 days and nights!"

—Tian XingXing, Project director.

Rightway Audio Consultants Ltd.