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Norwest Productions helps Australia and the world hear the Word of God.

Over a week of celebration and praise Norwest Productions assisted the World Youth Day organisation in providing audio for the largest Catholic youth event in the world. WYD08 was held in Sydney, Australia from the 15th to the 20th of July 2008.
Organised by the Catholic Church WYD brings together young people from around the globe to celebrate and learn about their faith. WYD08 was the largest event Australia has ever hosted. It attracted over 125,000 international visitors - more than the 2000 Olympics.  WYD08 also marked the first visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Australia.
Audio systems for all venues were designed by Scott Willsallen of Auditoria, www.auditoria.com.au then implemented and commissioned with tuning and time alignment, whilst Norwest Productions staff managed the day to day operation of the systems once in place. At four of the major sites, Barangaroo, Cockle Bay, Centennial Park and Royal Randwick Racecourse Norwest supplied audio systems for both liturgical services and youth musical festivals.

Barangaroo, which is located at the old Patrick Stevedores container yard on Hickson Road, was the site of the Opening Mass and Papal arrival ceremonies.  It is a strangely shaped venue being 1.2km wide and 400m deep. The audio system was required to cover both speech and musical content.  The main stage PA system consisted of four arrays of Adamson Y-Axis each comprising four Y-18 and four Y-10 with T21 subs added below.  Three concentric delay lines were used to assist in covering the massive area. These radiated out from the stage with intervals of 100m between each line using Nexo Alpha E B1 and M3 loudspeakers supplied by Johnston Audio Services.  The content range just was wide as the site itself - from spoken word to orchestral musical  to rock bands.
Audio was distributed using Dolby’s Dante network via a 10gigabit fibre network out to nine Dolby Lake processors located at stage and delay positions.  Backup, which was never required, was provided in the form of Norwest’s patented RF redundancy solution.

Barangaroo Crew
Project Manager – Simon Hardiman
FOH Engineer – Ian Shapcott
Monitor Engineer – Gary Hall
Orchestra Engineer – James Cadski
Systems Engineer – Justin Arthur
Monitor Systems Engineer – David Henderson
Delay System Engineer – Scott Barry
RF Engineer – Steve Caldwell
Stage Tech – Noel Denchfield
Stage Tech – Mathew Barnes

The Stations of the Cross was a complex event staged all over the city of Sydney which was a reproduction of Jesus’ last day. It culminated at Barangaroo North.  The PA system for the venue had to cover the majority of the site in the opposite direction to the main PA.  This was achieved by using eight towers each consisting of six EAW KF760’s - some from permanent structures and others from temporary mobile structures placed on the day of the event.

Program for the Stations of the Cross segment was generated at the Sydney Convention Centre by Ian Cooper and transmitted via digital networks to all the sites for reproduction. Barangaroo North FOH Engineer - Greg Kershaw Stage Tech - Piers Gilbertson

Darling Harbour was the site of numerous venues ranging from Stations of the Cross through to Youth Festival stages.  Norwest supplied four systems at this venue - Cockle Bay, Tumbalong Park, Palm Grove and Harbourside Amphitheatre.  Cockle Bay was a distributed loudspeaker system covering the southern end of the bay with a ring of RCF322i loudspeakers attached in pairs to the existing wharf poles on 6m truss sections. 

Audio distribution around the water’s edge and to the centre stage floating in the middle of the harbour was taken care of by an Optocore system. It also delivered video to screens on the floating central stage. Cockle Bay Project Manager/FOH Engineer – Ricki Cook Stage Tech – Mathew Ling

Running in conjunction with the Stations of the Cross at Darling Harbour was the Youth Festival.  This consisted of three systems located at Harbourside, Palm Grove and Tumbalong Park.  Each of these stages had Christian bands running over three days with up to twelve bands per day entertaining the crowd walking around the Darling Harbour precinct.  With so much of our equipment heavily involved in other venues our friends at Hills SVL came to the rescue supplying two of their Turbosound Aspect Systems for the Harbourside and Palm Grove systems.  The Palm Grove system was made up of three Turbosound Aspect TA880H 3-way trapezoidal cabinets per side. These were tri-amplified using one LabGruppen FP7000 (LF) and one LabGruppen FP10000Q (MF/HF). Infills and subs were one Turbosound Aspect Wide TA500 3-way trapezoidal cabinet per side. These were bi-amplified using one LabGruppen FP10000Q power amplifier per side.  In addition there was one Turbosound TSW218 dual 18" horn loaded sub enclosure

The Harbourside system was made up of two Turbosound Aspect Wide TA500T 3-way trapezoidal
cabinets per side. These were bi-amplified using one LabGruppen PLM10000Q power amplifier with
integrated Dolby Lake Processing. Sub reinforcement was two Turbosound TSW218 dual 18" horn
loaded sub enclosures per side.

Hills SVL Systems Engineers • Gerry Gavros • Jeff Shoesmith • Don McConnell Palm Grove • FOH Engineer – Phil Meltzer • Stage Tech – Elise Tasker Harbourside • FOH Engineer – Chris Irvine • Stage Tech – Jamie Bruce Tumbalong Park • FOH – Scott Harrison • Monitors – Andre Harr • Stage Tech – Curtis Tennant

Randwick Racecourse

Last but by no means least, for the final events of WYD08, was possibly the largest audio system ever assembled in Australia at Royal Randwick Race course in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs. To go along with the eight Adamson Y-18 Y-Axis line array cabinets, with Y10 infill and T21 subs, either side of enormous stage an additional sixty six delay towers were required to cover the 1,000,000m2 area.
These consisted of six concentric delay lines at intervals of 80-100m. The loudspeaker manufactures represented were as diverse as the crowd due to the large numbers of cabinets that had to be assembled from across Australia. The majority of the speaker system and all control, monitors, radio and wired microphones came from the Norwest inventory. It could not have been achieved without the help from our friends, Oceania Audio (now a Norwest group company), Johnston Audio Services and IJS who supplied equipment and staff to bump in, manage and bump out their respective equipment.

The delay lines consisted of:
Delay B – 48 Meyer Milo spread over 6 towers
Delay C – 50 L’acoustic V-Dosc spread over 8 towers
Delay C – 69 L’acoustic KUDO over 11 towers
Delay D – 66 L’acoustic KUDO over 11 towers
Delay E – 60 EAW KF750 over 13 towers
Delay F – 72 d&b Q1 over 11 towers

Signal distribution was handled by Dolby’s Dante system which incorporates audio and control over Ethernet using a total of twenty one Dolby Lake 4/12 processors. This was sent through a fibre optic back bone (supplied by other contractors) to around 20% of the delay towers with analogue distribution to each of the other delay towers from that point. The system was used the Norwest patented RF backup system transmitted from the FOH position to each DLP’s analogue input. Musical and liturgical sources were similar to the Barangaroo site with a 96 piece orchestra playing during the Mass portions and the front half of the stage being used as a Youth Festival stage. Orchestral stems were mixed in Figure 8 Audio’s broadcast bus using Studer Vista 8 console which had stage boxes remotely located on stage returning to the bus via fibre and then distributed to FOH and monitors. FOH mixing duties were taken care of by the Digico

Randwick Crew
Project Manager – Nick Hutchinson
FOH Engineer – George Gorga
Monitor Engineer – Matt Debien
Orchestra Mix Engineer – David Richards
Network and Systems Engineer – Ian Cooper
Monitor Tech – Syd Pittlik
Senior Stage Tech – Gus Oberg
Stage Tech – Dane Cook
RF Engineer – Steve Caldwell
Delay B Tech – Tristan Nelson-Hauer
Delay C Tech – Jock Bain
Delay D Tech – Antonio Calvi
Delay E Tech – Aiman Elbob
Delay F Tech – Dan Gallard
Delay G Tech – Jake Sulley

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