Eurovision Song Contest 2021 comes to life with Lawo mc²56 consoles and VSM Control

Lawo’s 64-fader mc²56 consoles and VSM control system are a key part of the 2021 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Dutch hosts NOP, NOS and Avrotros once again entrusted NEP and United (EMG) with the technical production of the event. It runs for a whole week: Tuesday 18 and Thursday 20 May are the two semi-finals, while the grand final takes place on Saturday 22 May.

To manage the sound for the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, NEP has equipped its UHD1 and UHD2 mobile units with 64-fader mc²56 consoles, Nova routing cores and the VSM broadcast control system, all Lawo products. The two trucks are configured so that one of them can serve as a backup in the event of any inconvenience.

Requested by the Eurovision staff

On the other hand, Lawo Rental has provided two additional mc²56 consoles with 48 faders and monitoring equipment. These devices are located in a separate room from where music producer Tijmen Zinkhaan will run the mix of everything that happens in the interludes of the gala. While all audio connections are transmitted via RAVENNA/AES67, the audio signals for the PA in the venue are provided by Dante cards within the Nova routing cores.

The selection of the Lawo equipment was a deliberate choice by Eurovision Song Contest 2021 sound manager Thijs Peters: “There was never any doubt that Lawo consoles were the perfect match for this prestigious assignment. They sound great, their routing capabilities are infinite, our setup integrates seamlessly and can be conveniently and intuitively controlled via Lawo’s VSM broadcast control system.”

Among other profiles, broadcast mixing engineer Andre Swart, effects engineer Marcel Korfage and music producer Tijmen Zinkhaan will benefit from Lawo’s solutions.