INNOVASON triumphant at Czech Grammy Awards:

The Czech Academy of Music held its annual Andel (Grammy) awards ceremony at the CEZ arena in Ostrava in March. CEZ is the third largest venue in the Czech Republic and has played host to the likes of Iron Maiden, Manowar and Aerosmith as well as Sting, José Carreras and Lord of the Dance, in addition to a number of prestigious international sporting events. Czech audio production specialists and INNOVASON distributor, MusicData, provided full audio production services for the event, which included a total of three INNOVASON digital mixing consoles running a Nexo GEO-T line array system with amplification from Camco.

MusicData opted for an Sy80 at FoH, an Sy48 for monitors and a further Sy48 in the OB van. "We use INNOVASON consoles wherever possible," remarked MusicData's Tomas Ourednicek. "They sound great with really high dynamics and we find them to be extremely reliable. They also pack a huge number of inputs into a very compact footprint. For this show, more than 130 inputs were required in total because each band was only playing one song with extremely fast changeovers, so we had no time for re-patching between acts. However, as all of the desks are EtherSound-enabled, we were able to use two Stage Boxes, one of which was a DioCore (INNOVASON'S dedicated EtherSound-enabled stage box). That gave us 64 channels on EtherSound over CAT5 and the rest on coax, except for the OB van where we decided to use fibre optic for both coax and EtherSound signal transmission, as the OB van was located quite a long way from the stage."

"The whole show ran extremely smoothly and the sound was excellent, mainly due to the ease of operation and high dynamics of the desks and the cardioid characteristics of the GEO-T," concluded Ourednicek. "The system handled the style changes between German heavy metal acts and artists performing with a children's choir (with condenser mics just 1m from the choir and 5m from the main PA!) without a hiccup. There wasn't a hint of feedback and the sound remained impeccable from start to finish. This is what I call a job well done."