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Sennheiser in the Saddle at Burghley
The Burghley Horse Trials, one of Britain's biggest annual sporting events, were once again full to capacity this September. Alongside the world's finest horses, three-day event riders and around 150,000 spectators was a wide range of Sennheiser radio equipment in the capable hands of Nick Chubb of Show Hire Ltd. "We make sure everyone there has audio from every angle," explains Chubb.
"The information from the show goes through lots of different systems, a lot of which are zoned together. They have a cross-country course as a major part of the Trials, which is a big area for us to cover; seven and a half kilometres of speaker runs. From a safety point of view we also have an evacuation system across the entire site, which is generally used for announcements about lost children, dogs left in cars and emergencies."
One of the biggest challenges facing the Show Hire team was ensuring perfect sound in Burghley's huge 10,000-seat arena (home to the Trials' show jumping and dressage events) along with numerous presentations over its five day schedule. It was a problem that Sennheiser products and personnel were more than able to cope with.
"Our main problem at Burghley," continues Chubb, "is the size of the arena we have to cover. It’s 1250 square metres and from corner to corner, that's a really long throw. We've looked after the audio at Burghley for fourteen years and in the past achieving that range has been a challenge. But I spoke to Sennheiser's Chief Engineer Andy Lillywhite at length about it before this year's event and he put together a clever diversity system for us, just using standard EM550 G2 paddle antennas. We were using two pairs of these aerials, each 50 metres from our control point. Now we can do larger arenas and have really good range on our radio mics. The aerials were the strong point of the whole thing. We used the EM550 receivers and the excellent AB1036-UHF amplifiers. And for the mics we used SK500 body packs with SKM535 hand held mics or HSP2-EW headsets.
"To to give one example, a dressage expert conducted a master-class in the arena and it was absolutely packed. We gave him a Sennheiser HSP2-EW and he did a 45-minute presentation on horseback with no cutting out and no hissing; the clarity was faultless. We had full signal the entire duration of the display."
The choice of Sennheiser for Burghley's audio was made after lengthy consultation with various manufacturers. In the end, it was Sennheiser's expertise in providing audio solutions for complex situations that made the decision simple.
"To be honest, I approached other microphone companies," admits Chubb, "but they don't have anyone like Andy Lillywhite. He would talk to me for hours about our problems and he was so good with it. He said you need to try this, this, this and this. Which we did and it was just fantastic. It all worked so well. The Sennheiser stuff is metal cased. It's tough. It¹s got a good reputation. I never buy radio mics from anyone else. We've got an ancient Sennheiser G1 Series wireless mic system. It's ten years old and still going out every single day. It never lets us down. Why would I look anywhere else?"
In addition to the Burghley Horse Trials, Show Hire also provides the audio at the Badminton Horse Trials, another of the highest-attended sporting events in the UK. Although located on a slightly smaller site, Badminton also includes a 16,000-seat arena where the Sennheiser equipment made its successful equine debut earlier this year.
"We do the two biggest horse trials in the UK," says Chubb proudly. "Looking to the future we would love the opportunity to take our equipment and our know-how to provide the audio for the equestrian events at the 2012 Olympics. If we do get the chance I know I'll be straight on the phone to Andy Lillywhite."
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