Republic Day parade goes digital with Harman

INDIA: Each year, during Republic Day, a grand parade takes place between the Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate along New Delhi’s ceremonial boulevard, Rajpath. The PA system for the event is handled by the Indian Army Corps of Signals, which for the recent 68th Republic Day parade commissioned a new system that was provided by Harman after a rigorous selection process.

Republic Day celebrates the day that the Constitution of India came into effect in 1950 and the parade is attended by political and military representatives of all levels, as well as thousands of members the public. The festivities are also broadcast on both national television and radio. The previous system used for the parade relied on analogue audio lines to transmit the audio feed from one rack location to another. This setup was deemed risky and as such, a back-up amplifier was always on standby and was of an age that it required manually switching to.

For the new solution, Harman delivered a complete system from several of its brands with Dante and CobraNet as the backbone to connect five different rack points. JBL’s CBT 70J-1 and CBT 70JE-1 column loudspeakers were chosen by the army regiment, reportedly due to their combination of sound reproduction ability for both speech and music and their aesthetic look. Operators were provided with Soundcraft mixers, while a range of BSS digital signal processors facilitated audio transmission. Harman’s HiQnet Audio Architect software was utilised for system control and monitoring.

As for amplification, replacing the old system were Crown DriveCore Install series network amplifiers, deployed due to their dual analogue and digital input and priority router feature that automatically switches to analogue should the digital input fail. Line switching was courtesy of the Crown CT8SHO, which switches without the need for human interaction. A pair of differing amplifiers was installed at each PA zone, providing redundancy for loudspeaker line connectivity.

www.harman.in