The house orchestra of Italy’s prime time TV program I migliori anni (“The Best Years”) is relying on Aviom’s Pro16 personal mixing system.
Broadcast weekly on Rai Uno and hosted by Carlo Conti, each episode of “The Best Years” highlights two different decades from the 60’s to present time, looking at the music, sex symbols and current events of those periods.
The show features a variety of live dance performances, comedy skits, and musical performances with an orchestra conducted by Pinuccio Pirazzoli.
With the program broadcast live and including music and dance performances from multiple musical genres, sound reinforcement engineer Fabio Spadoni has the challenge of providing the orchestra with a monitoring setup that ensures that everyone is on cue.
Aviom personal mixing systems help Spadoni overcome the challenges week after week.
“With live television there are no do-overs, so every element of the show needs to be the best it can be – even the audio equipment,” explains Spadoni.
“The Aviom personal mixers allow each instrument section to have a monitor mix that works best for them, allowing them to focus on their performance rather than the equipment.”
All mic inputs on the show’s set are sent to a Studer Vista 8 console that has two Studer-built Aviom A-Net output cards installed.
Two sets of 16-channel monitor mix content for the musicians are assigned to the console’s A-Net cards by the mix engineer. The cards’ A-Net outputs are then each connected to an A-16D Pro A-Net Distributor – one for the rhythm, string and vocal sections and the other for the brass section.
From the A-16D Pro, Cat-5 feeds are sent to the A-16II Personal Mixers for the four musicians. The Pro16 mixing system simplifies the show’s setup each week and provides repeatable monitoring during both rehearsals and the live broadcast.
At the same time it helps keep the musician’s monitoring levels low on the set, helping to improve the overall quality of the show’s broadcast audio by eliminating extraneous noise on the set from open-air monitor speakers.