The sky over Berlin was a radiant blue on this July day in 2008. The capital was expecting a special guest: Barack Obama, the presidential contender from the USA, who many people – even in Europe – saw as a particular bearer of hope.

Optimum Sound for 200,000 Listeners

In front of the impressive backdrop of the Siegessäule victory column, he would speak to the people of Berlin in the late afternoon – and they were curious and excited about hearing him. From the middle of the day, they flocked to the venue. Nobody knew how many were coming. In the end, there were around 200,000. They stood in a dense crowd on Straße des 17. Juni and everyone wanted to see and hear Obama. We in the POOLgroup ensured that this was actually possible.

Difficult Acoustics, Successful Solutions

POOLsound was responsible for the overall sound engineering at this mega event. Under difficult acoustic conditions, in the middle of the open area of the Tiergarten zoological gardens, we set up a sound system with optimum speech intelligibility around the victory column and over a length of around 2 kilometres. To do this, numerous Meyer sound arrays were installed and monitored remotely. The control was governed by radio transmission to the individual systems over the entire route.

Images that are Transmitted to the World

However, it was not only the people of Berlin who were there live when Barack Obama greeted the “people of the world” – millions of people also saw him on screens all over the world. We provided our technical know-how for this too. As such, connected media broadcasters such as CNN and ABC were provided with special sub-mixes and over 100 press feeds were available for other TV and radio stations.

An Event that Stays in the Memory

A successful appearance, an impressive speech and an important step towards office, which Barack Obama has since taken up. The people of Berlin were impressed and so were we. We are happy and proud to have been able to contribute to the success of this important Berlin speech. Any time you need us again Mr President…!