As Sound Image was preparing to stage the weekend-long WE Fest country music festival, at the Soo Pass Ranch in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, they turned to Optocore to simplify the show’s signal distribution, and implemented a pair of Optocore Festival Boxes to create a format agnostic fiber tunnel for all the guest acts.
When he began to put the show together, Sound Image system engineer, Timothy ‘Ziggy’ Ziegler, elected to deploy one of Sound Image’s fiber PA drive systems that’s based on a set of Optocore X6R-FX units, used to distribute both AES and LAN.
The X6R at FOH, configured to accept 16 AES inputs, sends digital audio over redundant fiber optic cables to the drive racks on Stage Left and Stage Right where the signals are outputted via X6Rs configured for 16 AES Out to amplifiers powering JBL A12 Line arrays.
“By keeping the PA feed digital throughout the entire signal chain, the system is more efficient, and by transporting it over fiber it gives us a superb sonic quality that increases the system’s dynamic head room over what you would get with copper connections,” comments Ziggy on using the X6Rs.
Optocore’s 2GB fiber network also creates a virtual Ethernet network between every device, which allows IP data to easily pass across the entire system. From the laptop running System Manager at FOH, PA control is sent to the stage without running additional cables.
Ziggy adds: “Knowing that I could just plug in my laptop and connect to the amps stage without having to configure any IP addresses within the Optocore was easy. Once I plugged in, the amps popped right up.”