The World Equestrian Festival, CHIO Aachen is hosted over two weekends at the beginning of July each year and attracts the international equestrian elite, who compete in show-jumping, dressage and driving competitions at the show grounds of the Aachen-Laurensberger Rennverein (ALRV) in Germany.

German rental company Sirius - one of the first companies to invest in the new DiGiCo SD7 console earlier this year - was contracted to provide audio requirements for the event and threw engineer Patrick Eckerlin, who had not only never used an SD7 before, but had little DiGiCo experience at all, in at the deep end by specifying an SD7 as his console for the entire event.

“ I took part in a D5 training session a couple of years ago, but I have never actually worked with the console,” he recalls. “But Sirius has bought two SD7s and one of them will be the next mixing desk for me when I go out on tour with German band PUR. So Frank Müller, systems engineer at Sirius, thought it would be a good idea to bring in the SD7 for the Aachen job so that I could have a little practice on it before I get a training day.”

The entire event was televised, so as well as feeding audio to the front of house loudspeaker system, Eckerlin provided broadcast feeds from the SD7 to German television stations ARD and ZDF (via WDR) and FanTV.

“I found most of the features I needed by trial and error,” he says. “But I also stayed in touch with Digger, one of DiGiCo’s technical sales guys, in case I needed any help. Initially, I had a couple of issues with programming, but most of the features are very intuitive. I managed the show without any training – and that says it all really!”

Eckerlin admits that it was not really necessary to have such a powerful console for at CHIO Aachen – only 13 inputs and 15 outputs were used – but as a practice run for the forthcoming PUR tour, where he will be using around 70 inputs it was, he says, invaluable.

“I think the SD7 is currently being used far under its potential level,” he concludes. “But the client was happy with the result and I think we will do this job again next year.”

About Chio Aarchen

• Visitors: In June/July 2008, 357,250 spectators visited the CHIO Aachen
• There were three general sponsors: Mercedes-Benz, ROLEX, Warsteiner
• Volunteers: About 1,200 during the tournament
• Media: Almost 500 accredited journalists and over 200 TV employees
• TV-Coverage: 2008 nationally more than 30 hours (ARD/WDR and ZDF), thereof over 25 hours of "pure" sports coverage; internationally: Broadcasts into all countries of the world (except from Antarctica, where there is no satellite reception)

Press Contacts:
Dave Webster at DiGiCo
Tel: +44 1372 845600
Email: webby@digiconsoles.com
Web: www.digiconsoles.com

Sarah James at Gasoline Media
Tel: +44 1372 471472
Email: info@gasolinemedia.com