Recorded and mixed at Katara Studios in Doha, the music for the opening and closing ceremonies at this year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar saw Prism Sound audio conversion were extensively to ensure the highest levels of clarity and quality.
‘Katara Studios has more than 50 Prism Sound converters ranging from the flagship ADA-8XR multichannel converters, through to DA2 stereo D/A and AD2 stereo A/D converters,’ says mastering engineer Mazen Murad, who is Katara Studio’s Director of Music Production and mastering engineer. ‘We use them for everything, all the time. For the FIFA World Cup project, every activation that had anything to do with music involved a Prism Sound unit at some point in the chain – from recording live musicians, through to mixing, mastering and postproduction.’
The event has seen FIFA break with tradition by abandoning the use of one official song in favour of the FIFA World Cup Official Soundtrack, featuring songs from several high-profile artists. Produced by FIFA’s Creative Entertainment Executive, RedOne, three songs on the soundtrack were recorded at Katara Studios. These included ‘Hayya Hayya’ (Better Together), featuring Trinidad Cardona, Davido and Aisha; ‘Arhbo’ featuring Ozuna, GIMS and RedOne; and ‘Light the Sky’ featuring four of the Arab world’s most famous female singers – Balqees, Nora Fatehi, Manal and Rahma Riad.
‘We began working on audio demos in 2021, soon after FIFA Sound announced its new entertainment strategy,’ Murad says. ‘The aim of the songs is to connect audiences through a shared passion for music and football. Artists from all over the world have been involved, representing many different countries and musical genres.’
Katara Studios is the most technically advanced film and music recording complex in the Middle East. To capture the music for the FIFA World Cup opening and closing ceremonies, the studio hosted a week of full orchestral sessions, which were engineered by Matt Howe, Katara’ Studio’s Chief Recording Engineer and formerly of AIR Studio and Metropolis. Howe and Murad invited UK-based composer and conductor Youki Yamamoto to lead from the conductor’s podium.
‘We were literally reading from the same page, not just the sheet music,’ he says.
The orchestral sessions used Prism Sound converters to input audio from around 64 microphone signals into Pro Tools. ‘Some of Katara’s larger systems are configured with up to 96 channels worth of Prism Sound ADA-8XRs in transportable racks,’ Howe says. ‘We can even go higher than that if we unite them in tandem with our other interface racks, at mixed sample rates and connected to other capture systems. This is useful when we have requests for very high-definition multichannel recordings such as Dolby Atmos and Immersive sound stem capture and delivery when we can afford to go outside of the remit of broadcast standards.’
‘The work we did for FIFA sounds great,’ Murad adds. ‘Prism Sound converters play a big part in our success, and we really couldn’t have delivered such high quality audio without them.’
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