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BW: It’s
incredible how much clarity you get with a correct
gain stage.
TDC: Just
extraordinary! In the Concert Hall there’s a series
of winches that sit above the stage. That’s the
standard place that people want to put a microphone
tree for orchestras. But that cabling goes from
there all the way to the ceiling through slip
rings then onwards… it would have to be 200 to
300 metres of cable.
BW: It’s a
long way...
TDC:
It is a long way! Particularly when you see people
come in and put up expensive mics for a specific
technique of miking. They’re expecting the best
from the performers and the best performance from
their equipment. I’ve now made sure we’ve had
the preamps localised next to the microphones,
and the experience all around has been fantastic.
Opera House Live to
Air
A recent visit by crooner du jour, Michael Buble,
gave the Opera House a good chance to stretch
its broadcast legs. A small concert in the SOH’s
Utzon Room went live to air on Mix 106.5FM. Tony
sets the scene:
TDC: Michael
Buble and his record company Warners wanted to
do a promotion linked in with Mix106.5FM. The
station does a series of live-to-air gigs called
Mix106Live. In this case a couple of hundred lucky
listeners could come in and see Michael perform.
BW: So how
was it done, with an outside broadcast van on
the steps?
TDC: No, we
did the lot. From front of house to recording,
all the way through to the actual broadcast.
The gig was staged in the recently refurbished
Utzon Room. It’s a 300- to 400-capacity venue.
The gig involved the Buble Band plus eight horns
and six strings, so there’s quite a lot of open
mics and lines to deal with on a tiny stage. They
were all quite cramped up there.
The gig was very significant for us because it
was the first time all of our systems had been
exploited in this way. It was quite a showcase
gig. With all the lines, we ended up with another
console up in the Utzon Room so there were 40
channels of audio coming down to the main studio.
All the information was split, then the mobile
racks picked up those signals and converted them
to optical, sent them down to the control room
where I did the mix and tracked everything. On
top of that I was doing the mix for broadcast.
The audio was travelling from the studio control
room back to the Utzon Room where we had ISDN
lines straight off to Mix106’s studios.
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BW:
And tracking to which system?
TDC: This time
around we tracked to ProTools, Pyramix and the Genex
recorders simultaneously. Then I had a comms link
from 106.5 coming via the ISDN line into the internal
system in the Utzon Room, as well as an on-air feed
for monitoring purposes. The round trip for the
data was approximately 400 milliseconds, which I
was pleasantly surprised by. Two hours before the
gig the guy turned up with a small black box for
the ISDN feed. They plugged it in and all of a sudden
we had an hour of airtime on one of Sydney’s premier
radio stations. The whole show ran like clockwork.
It was just lovely.
BW: Quite an endorsement of the entire
system then?
TDC: Absolutely.
The whole gig was significant for a number of reasons.
Firstly, because of the level of technical enterprise
required. For example, we’d sound-checked the band
the day before ? but in The Studio… a completely
different venue. So it was a case of getting the
entire band set up and checked. At which time I
was getting a tracking mix balance sorted out. Then
it was a case of pulling everything down and trucking
it all upstairs to the Utzon Room for broadcast
the following day.
Thanks to the sophistication of the new system that
process was vastly simplified ? I’m not saying the
gig was easy, but it definitely made it possible.
BW: Why did
you record the rehearsal?
TDC: It gave
me a chance to fine-tune my approach. It may have
only been five bars from the band but I could loop
that in ProTools and have all the channels coming
back in as if they were playing. From there I could
add extra processing for the mix in preparation
for the broadcast.
BW: Sounds like
you’re well satisfied with the result?
TDC: I am. The
Opera House has never done a broadcast under its
own steam. Normally we’ve always provided services
for other broadcasters - this gig really fulfilled
the vision of what the Euphonix rig and the venue-wide
integration were designed to do here.
Big band, small stage.
The first broadcast from the Utzon Room was quite
a squeeze for Michael Buble and his 15-piece band.
Between the players and their instruments, the
Mix FM DJ, assorted guests and on-lookers, there
wasn’t room to swing a hep cat.
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