This 16th annual South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs), held recently as a virtual event in Johannesburg that was broadcast live, was supported by a stage monintoring system utilizing Alcons Audio pro-ribbon loudspeakers.
Production company Don’t Look Down Productions contracted Johannesburg-based AV Unlimited to provide the full technical production, with the monitor sound mixed by Adriaan van der Walt. “Because the awards ceremony was live to air, there was no opportunity to do a second take. Reliability and consistency were crucial, in terms of both the technical staff and the demands on the equipment,” explains Guillaume Ducray, operations director at AV Unlimited. “Because of these demands and, as a long-time user of Alcons systems, we had no doubt about which system to deploy.”
Ducray specified a flown main system of left and right arrays each comprising three LR16 dual 8-inch line array modules loaded with RBN601 pro-ribbon drivers, joined by an LR16B double 15-inch bass module. A pair of VR12 mid-size monitors, also equipped with the patented RBN601 drivers, were used at the mix position, with all loudspeakers driven by ALC2 2x1kW and ALC4 2x2kW amplified loudspeaker controllers with onboard Digital Drive Processor (DDP).
“Because this was a virtual event, the broadcast mix was done in the studio, not from an OB van,” says van der Walt. “This meant the mix had to adhere to EBU R 128 loudness normalisation specifications of L(K) = -23 LUFS. The transparency of the VR12, combined with the clinical damping factor of the ALC2, meant the mix in the studio translated very well on-air.”
The LR16s and LR16Bs were set to a 160 Hz preset while the VR12s were set to full-range. “This resulted in a very smooth transition between both systems, which gave me an accurate reference to what both the artists on stage and the audience at home heard,” van der Walt concludes. “To this day the LR16 system stands its ground against any other professional sound system, with the variety of DDP preset options allowing the user to deploy the system for a wide variety of applications.”
