Among the ‘must see’ events staged in Brazil in 2013, both the Rio de Janeiro Carnival and Jamiroquai’s performance at the Credit Card Hall in São Paulo have both seen DiGiCo mixing consoles in action.
While the flagship SD7 took part in the legendary Rio de Janeiro Carnival, Dan Ungaretti used an SD8 on monitors for Jamiroquai: ‘Jay Kay prefers wedges and has a fair few of them around the stage, so he has a separate console and engineer for them – and as there are 11 other musicians on stage, it makes sense to handle them separately,’ says monitor engineer Ungaretti, who has been working with Jamiroquai since early 2011.
His answer to the problem is a DiGiCo SD8, provided by long-term supplier Britannia Row Productions, which he uses to mix the band’s in-ear monitors: ‘There are 60 inputs from stage. I have some extras for the ears and rehearsals, so I’m using all 60 channels on the desk, plus I’ve snuck another couple in the back door. The entire band wears IEMs and there is a pair of wedges for the keyboard player.
‘I use the SD8 because the gig fits in a nice size footprint, which is important when you have two monitor consoles to fit in,’ he continues. ‘I think the SD8 has a great spec for its size and price and, despite filling the board with ins and outs, I never feel lost in its layout. And, although we generally tour with our own consoles, if we haven’t been able to take our own for some reason being able to find an SD8 everywhere we’ve been is a massive advantage.’
Ungaretti also gets good use from DiGiCo’s matrix and macros: ‘I’ve started using the Audio Enhancer FX which I think can be great for really opening up certain mixes,’ he says.
Meanwhile, at the Rio de Janeiro Carnival, Gabisom supplied an SD7 with three SD Racks for the central audio distribution hub, along with the rest of the PA for the vast audience along the Sambodromo, as well as broadcast feeds for TV Globo.
The SD7 took feeds from the live audio Samba trucks – each of the school bands had two sets of 24 channels of digital with analogue snakes for backup. As the truck moved with the Samba parade on the 700m-long Sambadromo, engineer Marcos Possato Jr switched the audio from one snake to the next on the SD7. From this, he deliveredsplits for the TV broadcast, as well as the parade mix, which was handled by Eder Moura.
‘As the parade moves down the Sambodromo, the delay time and volume of the audio has to be tight, as it has to be distributed to 36 speaker towers,’ Eder explains. ‘Each 24 channel snake is colour coded, with each channel being fed to an Aux send. The red fibre and the analogue snake provides the audio for the first portion of the street parade, with the trucks being stationary. When the trucks began to move, the green fibre annd analogue did the second portion of the street parade and so on, until the end of the 36 speaker towers. For quick change of snakes, Possato used Control Groups for each set of snakes and took care of most of the gain changes, plus a spare mix of the parade from the live Samba band, which moved down the Sambodromo.’
The highlight of the event is the Samba Schools that have made Rio the carnival capital of the world: ‘The carnival revolves around these two nights and the schools belonging to this group are thought to be the best and particularly spectacular,’ Eder says. ‘The two nights are similar in terms of set-up, with six of the best 12 samba schools parading on both Sunday and Monday. With the opening ceremony at 20.00, the first school starts at 21.00, and the night’s entertainment generally finishes somewhere around 6am’
‘The Gabisom team and the DiGiCo consoles are certainly put through their paces over 15-plus hours on consecutive days. Suffice to say that the competition is taken very very seriously and as the main days are all broadcast live to air, the system and team have to be very reliable and professional.’
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