Digital dancing
Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, MIKE CLARK
Fancy footwork was employed to mix sound for prime-time Italian TV show.
Sound reinforcement
A Vista 5 console provides the mixdown of the 15-piece band for sound reinforcement for the studio audience. Photo by Mike Clark.
The band had a 15-piece line-up. The Vista 5 was used for sound reinforcement and handled about 70 channels.
In addition to the electric and acoustic (double) bass, the bass player also played keyboards. The keyboard player had two keyboards. The two guitarists had electric, classic and acoustic instruments, as well as another keyboard. The brass section had three trumpets, two trombones and four saxes, as well as other instruments, such as flutes.
In addition to the conventional kit, the drummer had a large array of sundry percussion instruments and a pair of close-mic'd timbales. There were four vocalists who alternated as soloists. The percussionist was particularly important, as many of the Latin and Caribbean songs spotlighted specific percussion instruments.
The crew had already used the Vista 7 and 8 desks for important events, such as for the Sanremo Song Contest, but this was the first time it had used the Vista 5. Although the philosophy and operating principles are similar, the control surface varies slightly, as everything has been fitted into a more compact footprint. For example, the meters are located alongside the faders. There were three bays — two of input channels and one of outputs. The crew used three layers, which made work a lot faster. The DSP core's processing power is greater than the previous generation of DSP cards, so the work the crew had done with 15 cards could now be done with three.
Apart from a premix of each brass section, the sound reinforcement console received the same channels as the broadcast sound. Rather than a conventional sound reinforcement application, however, the crew used the console to balance the live sound of the band, as the natural sound of some instruments, such as the saxes, would have been covered by the others.
The speaker systems deployed were two arrays of eight Meyer Sound M1D plus two subs on the floor per side. They were installed quite far forward due to set design requirements, so a pair of UPA-1 and UPA-2 were added for in-fill and down-fill purposes. The crew obviously also had to bear in mind the average age of the members of the studio audience — who definitely weren't accustomed to rock ‘n’ roll concert SPL.
The band used an Aviom A-16II personal monitor mixing system for foldback. Photo by Emilio Logozzi.
Monitor mixing chores on the Vista 7 were shared by Moscardi and Vacca. Moscardi was responsible for the sound fed to a series of Meyer Sound CQ-2 enclosures strategically positioned around the dance floor for the contestants. Vacca took care of the band's headphones.
Here too, the desk's division into bays was exploited for four-hand mixing, so Vacca was able to work on the vocalists' feed without interfering with anything Moscardi was doing at the same time for the dancers, or vice versa.
The digital console also enabled the engineers to store a basic mix for each type of dance, with which snapshots for each individual song could then be fine-tuned and stored. More than 200 were created during the shows!
Foldback for the band
The band's monitor set-up comprised an Aviom A-16II personal monitor mixing system with two transmitter units (connected via Cat 5 cable) and a series of XXL headphone amps. The musicians used one transmitter. They received 13 channels of music that they could mix at will, plus three service channels. These were used for facilities such as the headset mic worn by drummer Mauro Parma, who was constantly linked with the sound crew's communication system based in the OB truck.
The music channels included separate kick-drum, snare and high-hat, a mix of the drum kit, one of the bass and others of the keyboards, guitar 1, guitar 2 and the brass. With these, the musicians could tailor the mix heard in their cans to suit their personal requirements, without having to interact with the engineers. A premix was done of the brass section. Each player mixed with the rest of the band's sound on their Aviom A-16. This was fed to their XXL, which they used to balance it with the feed of their own mic, received directly from the console. The Aviom A-16T transmitter was used for the vocalists, in a conventional manner with a mixdown of the band.
Another key automation feature used on the show was the great ease with which a single parameter or all the settings of an entire channel could be copied from one fader to another. In the event of a problem with a mic, the musicians could immediately copy their EQ, compression and everything else to another channel, ensuring even further versatility.
Mike Clark is an Italy-based UK journalist specializing in entertainment technology.
Technology at work
Aviom
A-16II personal mixer
A-16T transmitter
Meyer Sound
CQ-2 narrow-coverage main loudspeaker
M1D curvilinear array loudspeaker
UPA-1 wide-coverage loudspeaker
UPA-2 narrow-coverage loudspeaker
Midas
House analog audio console
Studer
Vista 5 compact digital console
Vista 7 digital production console
Vista 8 live broadcast and production digital console
Technical team
Ballandi Entertainment
Cesare Gigli, director
RAI Impianti Speciali (Special Systems)
Alessandro Bernardi, manager
Mauro Severoni, sound engineer coordinator
Fabio Spadoni, sound engineer
Alessandro Amendolara, sound engineer
Marco Diano, in-studio band sound reinforcement
Emilio Logozzi, in-studio band sound reinforcement
Franco De Lucia, in-studio band sound reinforcement
Emanuele Moscardi, monitors
Gabriele Vacca, monitors
Edoardo Scognamilio, sound reinforcement, vocal mics
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