Do you play tennis? I’m an addict. I play four or five times a week; one of those sessions usually is an hour-and-a-half hit with the ball machine. Last year, my wife and I were given 10th row seats for the men’s semifinals at the U.S. Open. It was great, but HD television is so glorious that is hardly seems worth fighting the traffic out to Flushing.
The opening ceremonies to the U.S. Open are a major event, a series of events, actually, including festivities for kids, introductions of greats from the past — all the pomp and ceremony you could ask for. This year, Audio Incorporated, the supplier of sound reinforcement and communication equipment for U.S. Open Tennis, selected Optocore, a German firm, to provide X6R-FX-INTERCOM devices for the communication system used during the opening ceremonies.
When the Arthur Ashe Stadium opened in 1997, I wangled a press pass and toured it. If you’re offered seats in the top tier, think twice; it’s a huge venue. Optocore’s mandate included connecting audio from the highest reaches of the stadium, says Rom Rosenblum, events communication system technician, U.S. Open, and applications engineer, Clear-Com. “CBS, ESPN and every broadcaster covering the event was already hooked into existing copper lines. Without the Optocore devices, we’d have been communicating with cell phones to run the Arthur Ashe Kid’s Day event and opening ceremonies. Instead, as soon as we got the facility to install a piece of glass up to the roof, we were in business. A plug-and-play solution was never more welcome!”
More about Optocore can be found on the company website, www.optocore.com.
