AudioMedia - March 2009 - (Page 18) Broadcast Report Grammys Audio: A ‘Mixed’ Bag opened a couple of new opportunities: virtually instantaneous access to a mix the second a band walks off the deck, and, secondly, the opportunity to audition inputs from the deck while there’s a live telecast mix going on in L.” While an artist is performing on one of the show’s two stages during the live broadcast, he elaborated, “Being able to redirect the MADI stream, they can do the essential line check confirmation in the Nova truck [for the next performance] while the first band is still onstage, then mix it where it needs to be mixed, in the L primary truck.” In previous years, a dedicated audio engineer has been employed to pre-mix as many as four dozen microphones positioned in the audience for the Broadcast Pro d u c t i o n M i xe r. “ I n o u r Recording Academy television committee we have an interest in really trying to capture the live experience in the hall, and transmit that on the show,” said Neuberger. “We’re always looking for where the hotspots in the audience are in an industry event.” This year, 2 mics were deployed around the Staples Center arena, located in downtown Los Angeles, with a single point source Holophone mic providing the main audience image. “I’m a giant fan of this device,” he enthused. “It captures a beautiful 5.1 soundstage.” According to Neuberger, Tom Holmes, returning as Broadcast Mixer for his third year, “felt he could get a faster response, and bring that energy of the fans into the mix much quicker if he had those audience faders on his desk.” NEW EXPOSÉ E8B AND VXT SERIES FROM KRK Purity. Freedom from adulteration or contamination. That’s what you need in the recording studio. Pure and simple uncoloured audio. KRK engineers understand this, and take great care to offer speakers that can be relied upon to deliver. The Exposé E8B and VXT series take studio monitoring to a whole new level. With an attention to detail and design expertise unmatched in the industry today KRK has truly raised the bar. Key design elements such as a sleek radiused edge enclosure with optimised airflow and minimal port turbulence, and finely tuned custom components, all ensure that the new Exposeé E8B and VXT series deliver a pure and realistic sound that is in a class of its own. SO PURE An increase in live performances means the audio crew really had to raise their game to record this year’s Annual Grammy Awards. STEVE hArLEY witnesses how they pulled it off. very year, producers for music’s biggest night, the Recording Academy’s Grammy Award telecast, challenge the audio crew to raise their game, and every year they come through, pulling off the seemingly impossible. This year’s biggest challenge was an increase in live performances of some 25 percent, which was met by a change in the music mixing arrangements implemented this year. For this, the 51st annual Grammy Award show, XM/Effanel Music’s Nova music mixing remote truck was being used in tandem with the company’s larger L vehicle to allow each artist’s representatives to fine-tune their pre-mixes leading up to the broadcast. During previous years, a mirror-image mixing setup was established in a temporary building next to L, and once an artist finished their allotted onehour production rehearsal, the music mix was taken on a hard drive to the neighboring mix room for further work offline. But this year, with L, which is outfitted with a Digidesign ICON D-Command, and Nova, which boasts a D-Control offering MADI connectivity, a mix was available at the secondary mix position as soon as the artist stepped off the stage, reportedly creating as much as 1 additional hours of rehearsal time for music mixers John Harris and Eric Schilling. With the number of performances up this year from a typical 1 or 1 to two dozen, said Hank Neuberger, a Supervisor of the Grammy Awards broadcast audio, during rehearsals prior to the broadcast, “The interconnectivity E “In our Recording Academy television committee we have an interest in really trying to capture the live experience in the hall, and transmit that on the show” Alison Krauss and Robert Plant have made an impact at the last two Grammy Awards shows. Winning in for best pop collaboration with Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On), the Bluegrass singer and legendary rock god returned this year to capture five more awards with their album, Raising Sand. Performing Gone, Gone, Gone and Rich Woman live at the event, Krauss and Plant both relied upon hardwired Shure SM5s. Krauss has taken home a total of Grammys. Plant, who didn’t win any while fronting Led Zeppelin, has eight. PHOTO COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES WWW.KRKSYS.COM AUDIO MEDIA MArch 2009 http://WWW.KRKSYS.COM http://WWW.KRKSYS.COM
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