Digital dancing
Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, MIKE CLARK
Fancy footwork was employed to mix sound for prime-time Italian TV show.
The RAI team used three Studer Vista digital sound desks to cover this live production — one for the broadcast sound, one for the band’s monitor mix and one for sound reinforcement. Photo by Sebastiano Stringola.
The recent prime-time show “Ballando con Le Stelle” (“Dancing with the Stars”) demanded a tricky live dance by the technical production team. To accomplish this, the team controlled the show's audio with three digital consoles installed at the RAI's auditorium at Rome's Foro Italico, from which the show was aired live.
“Ballando con Le Stelle” is based on the BBC's “Strictly Come Dancing.” The show started with 14 couples, each consisting of a professional dancer and a celebrity, who demonstrated their dancing ability (after a week's practice between shows) in front of a panel of experts.
Hosted by Milly Carlucci with Paolo Belli and his Big Band, the show was produced by RAI Uno in collaboration with Ballandi Entertainment and directed by Cesare Gigli. The RAI audio team formed by Claudio Gatti performed meticulous work. The team is now part of a group called Impianti Speciali (Special Systems), founded by Alessandro Bernardi, manager of the relative RAI production area and in charge of the Italian state broadcaster's central and southern Italian OB services.
Three audio consoles
The show used three Studer Vista digital mixing consoles: a 52-fader Vista 8 in the music control room, a Vista 7 for a dual monitoring set-up and a Vista 5, the Swiss manufacturer's third-generation digital broadcast/live console, which controlled the sound reinforcement of the band for the studio audience.
The sound engineers (coordinated by Mauro Severoni) were Fabio Spadoni and Alessandro Amendolara. They handled the mixing of the band's broadcast sound (with the consultancy of Marco Diano); Emilio Logozzi and Franco De Lucia on in-studio band sound reinforcement duty; Emanuele Moscardi and Gabriele Vacca on monitors chores; and Edoardo Scognamilio, who was responsible for the sound reinforcement of vocal mics.
Broadcast feed
The Vista 8 digital live production console used to mix the band's playout sound was installed in a container outside the auditorium. The great advantage of working on these consoles was the possibility of several engineers working simultaneously without getting in each other's way — thanks to their division into 10-channel bays. In fact, Spadoni was at the center, with drums, the four vocalists and the final master; Amendolara took care of the guitars, percussion and keyboards; and Diano was in charge of the brass, following the songs on his sheet music.
Another function the team found particularly useful was being able to isolate certain parameters and carry them forward unchanged to future snapshots. After initial rehearsals and sound checks, changes happened. For example, the EQ had to be changed on the drummer's snare because the skin was changed. Or compression on a vocal mic or the gain on the guitar changed because the musician brought in a new amp. With this setup, the engineer could set the new parameters and isolate them. Snapshots recalled after they are isolated — whether they've been created before or after — will all have the new settings.
Emanuele Moscardi uses the Studer Vista 7 for the monitor mix of the contestants. Photo by Mike Clark.
The feature Spadoni used most frequently on the show was ganging. It allowed him to rapidly apply functions to multiple channel strips, since the series of channels selected to be ganged act as one. This feature was used with the mics of the four vocalists and of the nine brass players to raise or lower them simultaneously, without having to create a voltage-controlled amplifier.
The natural progression of this is Link All, another handy automation feature for this type of work. It offers the possibility of linking all the faders — even those that are not visible. Then the operator could raise or lower the levels, switch an aux on or off, and enable or disable an EQ, a compressor or anything else — all at once.
Counting such things as outboard units and reverbs, the audio console received more than 120 channels from the band. Working in the digital domain, a project like “Ballando con Le Stelle” would have been unthinkable with analog consoles.
The entire audio system was digital (including the console in the OB van), with the exception of the auditorium's resident Midas desk, which was used to mix the speech mics of the contestants, panel of experts, Carlucci and Belli.
Inside the auditorium and studio
The Vista 8 was used as a master and fed the mic signals received from two remote Studer stage boxes under the bandstand to the other two Vista desks in the studio via Multichannel Audio Digital Interface (MADI) with fiber-optic cable runs. Each was operated independently.
Although the show was simple and repetitive, there were about 30 to 40 songs per evening, so the consoles were essential for their signal routing and real-time recall facilities. The latter were put through their paces when two couples had to fight it out to see which was eliminated. They took turns to decide what dance the other had to perform. There was no ready-made playlist for that part of the show, so sound engineers and musicians had to be ready to roll after the short presentation of the couple in question.
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