Continuing its historic tradition of bringing together stars with world-wide recognition to witness music at its finest, the International Sopot Festival is Poland's largest event of the year and celebrated its 45th anniversary with a memorable two day festival. One of Warsaw's most recognized PA rental companies, GMB ProSound, supplied and operated the sound system centralized by Soundcraft Vi6â„¢ and Vi4â„¢ mixers.
GMB ProSound flawlessly accomplished consolidating audio suitable for an event of this caliber. The main front of house mixers deployed two Soundcraft Vi6s and the monitors were run through two Soundcraft Vi4 mixers.
The sound engineers powering the event were more than pleased with the appearance and ease of use given by Soundcraft's digital mixers. “One of our monitor engineers sat at the desk for the very first time and went through a timed rehearsal on day one without ever reading the manual beforehand,” said Remek Kasztelnik, sound engineer from GMB ProSound. “The ease of use and the touch-screen Vistonics interface allowed the engineers to handle any obstacle that the two day festival offered and didn't interrupt the engineers' ability to mix an amazing show,” continued Kasztelnik.
With its extreme popularity in the Polish culture, the festival was organized and aired live in HD by TVN, one of the country's main commercial TV networks. Kasztelnik proudly stated, “Our TV partners were very pleased because the Soundcraft boards allowed us to provide them with a copy of all signals via the consoles auxiliary MADI outputs directly from the show.”
Wladyslaw Szpilman, from Polish Radio, created the Sopot Festival in 1961 and the two-day event brings international contestants and guests together to celebrate great songs and lyrics. Throughout day one, several contests were scheduled requiring the talents of elite well-known artists. The “Amber Nightingale Prize,” a desired award, was presented to the Swedish group O'Laura who performed their lyric summer hit “Release Me.” Day two was solely devoted to the stars of the 80's with memorable performances by Limahl with Kajagoogoo, Shakin Stevens, Samantha Fox, Kim Wilde, and Thomas Anders with Modern Talking.