Yamaha Scores At UEFA EURO 2012
Within days of their manufacture, four of Yamaha’s new CL series consoles were given a very high profile assignment in the challenging environment of four football stadiums at the 2012 UEFA European Football Championships. Four M7CLs were also specified for the tournament.
The UEFA EURO 2012 matches took place in eight cities across co-hosts Poland and Ukraine - Warsaw, Gdańsk, Wrocław and Poznań in the former and Kyiv, Lviv, Donetsk and Kharkiv in the latter.
At the launch of Yamaha’s new CL5 series of digital mixing consoles in March, leading European audio production company Neumann & Mueller purchased four CL5s especially for the tournament. The consoles were used to mix the audio for all the in-stadium announcements and pre- and post-match entertainment, with a CL5 installed at each of the Polish venues.
Andy Cooper, manager at Yamaha Commercial Audio Europe’s support centre, supplied support to Neumann & Mueller’s team on the project, alongside Pawel Zachanowicz, Commercial Audio Application / Sales Engineer for Yamaha Music Europe GmbH in Poland.
“The opening ceremony had a complex audio specification, including wireless microphone inputs, in-ear monitor systems, a DJ music feed and multiple playback tracks from the Outside Broadcast studio,” says Andy. “The CL5 was located pitchside and the long distances between devices meant that a digital system was the only feasible solution. As well as the stadium’s loudspeaker system, there were also hangs of loudspeakers for the opening ceremony and monitors for the performers.”
The final element was a GPI relay link provided from the stadium control room to the CL5, which muted the system in case of emergency.
Neumann & Mueller’s Omar Samhoun was in charge of the audio systems at the four Polish stadiums and was very pleased with how the CL consoles performed.
“The CL5’s performance was great. I really liked the user-defined fader banks and the Premium Racks were really helpful,” he says. “The dynamic equalizer in particular is exceptionally good for these kind of events. Setting up the networking side of the CL5s was also very straightforward and they were exceptionally reliable.”
Meanwhile, Yamaha M7CL digital consoles were also used in combination with Riedel RockNet to perform the same functions at the four stadiums in Ukraine.
“We are very pleased that Neumann & Mueller chose the CL5 and M7CL consoles for such a high profile event as UEFA Euro 2012,” says Stefan Zeiger, Product Manager, Commercial Audio at Yamaha Music Europe GmbH.
“With each stadium holding many thousands of fans and every game being broadcast to millions of people across Europe, we were happy to be able to play a part in making the tournament such a huge success.”
