Currently the most popular TV talent show in China, Super Girl (超级女声) is the work of Chinese production company HBS (Hunan Broadcasting System) and its recently purchased Allen & Heath GLD-112 digital mixer with AR2412 and AB168 IO racks. A partner show to Super Boy, the show uses audience voting to determine the best singer from a its contestants.
The show was launched in 2004 but, in spite of its popularity, has been taken off-air twice through political dissent and contravention of permissible maximum running time. Its present run began in 2011, with the the final six episodes of Super Girl 2016 broadcast live on imgo.TV (an internet TV platform affiliated to HBS) to more than 35m active viewers per day. The shows featured performances from final competing contestants with commentary from five professional judges on stage, plus two guest performing artists. The biggest technical challenge was handling the mixture of handheld and headset microphones and various open mics, which was managed by GLD’s Automatic Mic Mixing (AMM).
‘The AMM feature is just fantastic, making GLD a perfect choice for TV broadcast applications,’ explains FOH engineer, Zhang Kaifeng. ‘While, in the past, I have had great trouble balancing the sound from handheld and headset microphones, I now get the AMM to easily make things right. Allen & Heath’s GLD mixer is already highly cost-effective and with AMM it becomes an even more valuable asset, that is definitely worth investing in.
‘The sound quality of GLD is so natural that it has very smooth frequency response. I am also impressed by its flexibility and reliability. I think it out performs many, more expensive mixers.’
AMM can be configured to work across all 44 microphone sources, allowing selected inputs to be auto-mixed without the usual restrictions of a 16 channel insert based system.
In addition to Super Girl, other HBS entertainment shows are handled by the GLD system, including Mars Intelligence Agency and Crime Scene.
More: www.allen-heath.com
