Of the many venues for the 1996 Olympic Games, the soccer stadium
presented a formidable audio challenge. A record crowd of 83,000
attended the opening ceremonies for the soccer events at Legion Field in
Birmingham, Alabama—the
only facility capable of handling the huge crowds expected for the
Olympic competition.
The three primary concerns of
this project were:
1. To evenly cover a huge
venue.
2. To provide a very
high-fidelity system that would meet the requirements of the featured
entertainers and also of some demanding program material.
3. To use a system small
enough and packaged in such a way that it could be struck from the field
in a matter of minutes after the ceremony (the USA vs. Argentina soccer
match would start immediately after the show).
Concert-level speaker boxes
staged at ten locations on the playing field would be used to cover the
mammoth facility. Initially, conventional
trapezoid-type FOH cabinets placed on their side, looking up into the
stands, were considered. But one just couldn't get complete or seamless coverage
using this technique. In corporate and small-venue entertainment work,
the MacPherson Monolith has become the cabinet of choice. The Monolith had tremendous horizontal coverage and smooth response, but had not yet
been tried it in a long throw situation. When the system was
assembled at Legion Field for rehearsals, it was found they could evenly
and completely cover the entire venue with a system that took only half
of a 48-foot truck to transport.
The opening ceremonies
incorporated a cast of 1,500 dancers, the Country group Shenandoah. Along with the Monoliths, M12Xs
were used as floor monitors for the Shenandoah stage. Broadband levels of about 102 dB
were achieved throughout the stadium. Considering the
size of these cabinets and how quickly the rig had to be struck after the
show, everyone was extremely happy with these boxes.
