While production for the 2020 series of X Factor Colombia began early in the year, was suspended for eight months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. When it resumed at RCN Televisión’s studios in Bogotá, an Allen & Heath dLive mixing system was chosen by freelance audio engineer, Richard Cardenas to handle live mixing duties.
Cardenas’s dLive set-up was built around a CDM48 MixRack, controlled from a 36-fader S7000 surface. He managed all the contestants’ IEM mixes, plus FOH and monitor mixes for the contestants, judges and audience.
The audio configuration in the studio consisted of an LR stereo matrix out, a matrix mono sub out, stereo aux mixes feeding side fills, a mono floor wedge set-up and a stereo aux mix for the judges’ side fill.
For the earlier recordings an audience pa mix was also fed to a stereo matrix. A DX012 12-output expander was employed to provide additional AES feeds to a 96kHz loudspeaker management system. Cardenas tapped into Allen & Heath’s array of networking options, choosing a Dante 64x64 card to feed the broadcast desk using dLive’s tie lines feature, plus a superMadi card for backup recording to a Pixel Power system.
Cardenas was a relatively new convert to dLive, having first encountered the system at a festival where he mixed multiple Latin Grammy winners a few months before being approached to work on the TV show. ‘During over 20 years of mixing I’ve had the pleasure of using high-end consoles from many different manufacturers,’ he says. ‘With dLive, I really felt like I was mixing rather than trying to figure out how to operate the desk.’
‘From the layout and colour schemes you can immediately see that this console was developed and thought out by real everyday users. So when I had the opportunity to work on X Factor Colombia, I asked RCN Televisión for a dLive system. We only had two weeks between delivery and rehearsals, but I had excellent support from Allen & Heath’s specialist in Colombia, Ivan Sanchez. Ivan was with me from the first call and was a huge help with installation, training and set up.’
dLive’s processing and FX libraries meant that Cardenas was able to streamline his system for the broadcasts, ‘The Deep processing emulations are excellent and sound very close to the real thing,’ he reports. The same goes for the FX. The EQs and preamps also sound excellent and dLive’s very low latency and 96kHz processing set it apart from the rest.’
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