Roland digital consoles, recorders and digital snakes were at the centre of the TV coverage of for the MTV EMA Pre-Party in Moscow. Aired on MTV Russia, the set-up comprised Roland’s M-400 and M-480 digital mixing consoles, two R-1000 standalone recorders, and S-2416, S-1608 and S-0816 Digital Snakes. This served all live production, mixing and recording requirements for the entire event.
The MTV Euro Music Awards took place at the GlavClub in Moscow, which is a regular host to both local and international artists. The Chief Sound Engineer for the portable studio, Evgeny Ilin, specified the Roland systems after using them Roland gear for previous projects.
On this occasion, he enlisted the assistance of Roland Russia to supply the equipment for the event as his own – almost identical –rig was already in use. Seeing it as a perfect opportunity to test drive the most recent addition to the Roland Digital Snake family – the S-2416 – he requested that this new snake was included in the set-up.
‘When Evgeny contacted us, we were more than happy to get involved in this high-profile event,’ says Sergey Borzov, Product Manager at Roland Russia. ‘Since spring, he has been using the M-480, M-400, R-1000, S-1608 and S-4000M for his own live sound projects, and we had been looking for a chance to demonstrate the capabilities of the S-2416 to him. With the consoles having a small footprint, a relatively lightweight and portable solution could be built that was easy to connect with the R-1000 and Digital Snakes using Cat5e. The compact Digital Snakes offered the flexibility to configure setups for different performances.’
The Roland systems were set up to handle two mixes – a music mix using the M-400 console and a programme mix with the M-480. The music part of the setup used the S-2416 (in cascade mode) and the S-1608 Digital Snakes, splitting 40 analogue channels from FOH through the R-1000 recorder to the M-400. The mix was done on the M-400 and sent via REAC (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication) back to the R-1000 to capture 42 channels.
The programme mix used the larger M-480 console, connected to S-0816 and S-1608 Digital Snakes via the R-1000. The S-1608 was used for four ambient mics and ten speech mics from the stage. The main task for the S-0816 was to link the video production team with 16 output channels and a few mics, so that the producers had a reliable connection to the stage. The second R-1000 captured ambient mics, speech mics and the stereo programme. Both the M-400 and M-480 were connected via analogue cables.
