OPTOCORE once again supports the transport of audio signals via optical fiber at Olympic Games. Beijing 2008 will surely present itself with a monumental show lasting three weeks and two highlights will certainly be the grand opening and the final ceremony. Both events will take place at Beijing's National Stadium better known as "The Bird's Nest" due to its unique shape and appearance. System Designer Gary Hardesty, in charge of the technical set up for the two ceremonies, brings in a lot of experience as he was in charge of all Olympic ceremonies over the past decade, asides from Athens 2004. His expressed wish was to use OPTOCORE for the transport of audio data to successfully address the 80,000 permanent and 11,000 temporary seats. Five redundant OPTOCORE rings are installed in order to offer a safe and reliable audio network for the two major show events.

Three redundant rings are set up to facilitate the loudspeakers in the stadium. The first ring exchanges signals with the speaker systems on the playing field, the second with so-called "pole-speakers", which are set up temporarily on poles for the two ceremonies and are located on the middle balcony between field and roof. The third ring addresses the speakers mounted to the roof of the stadium. OPTOCORE X6 16IN and X6 16OUT AD/DA converter modules receive and transmit their audio signals to and from the Meyer Sound Galileo Loudspeaker Management System located in the main control room of the stadium. Signals are then passed on to DD32E devices, which again communicate with DD32E and X6 modules located at the various amplifier locations in the stadium.

A further ring including X6 and DD32E devices was installed to address individual permanent loudspeakers in the stadium from the main console (Soundcaft Vi6) also located in the main control room. This ring can be described as a redundant point-to-point connection. The fifth ring is responsible for the mic-info coming from microphones located on the center stage and in the VIP area during the grand opening and closing ceremonies.

Using X6 AD/DA converters along with DD32E I/O network devices in such a big location with extremely long distances helps to put up a very safe and trustworthy system. AD/DA conversion delay can be ignored over these long distances, much more important is to have an excellent and independent word clock distribution achieved by the DD32E devices and to have absolute safe system eliminating almost any source of defect or malfunction. OPTOCORE stands for such a system, which made the decision easy to implement OPTOCORE into the system.

Musical Box Rent located in Verona/Italy, who closely worked together with local company BeiAo, the biggest Chinese production company, mainly supplied OPTOCORE devices. Essex/UK based Fibreco Limited provided the fiber optical cables. System Designer Gary Hardesty received full support by OPTOCORE's Luca Giaroli - International Sales and Technical Manager, who will also be on location during the games.