SOUTH AFRICA – Sun City Super Bowl played host to the 14th Annual MTN South African Music Awards (SAMA), an anticipated showcase of the country’s musical talent. Local rental company Sound Stylists provided the event’s audio requirements, with its recently purchased DiGiCo D5 Live console chosen as the front-of-house mixing solution.
Founded in 1987 by Kevin Glover, Sound Stylists is well versed in the requirements of such events, having a diverse array of productions to its name, including six SAMAs in the 5,000-seat Sun City Super Bowl.
“We needed to have the ability to store each of the eight different live bands that were performing throughout the Awards,” says Glover. “So we decided to use the D5 as it gave us the ability to do this as well as coping easily with the 60 inputs we were going to have at the front-of-house position.”
The house straight left/right system was used with a 56-channel stage box, eight analog lines at FOH and a TC Electronics TC 6000 across the AES/EBU inputs and outputs.
“We recorded the rehearsals using an ADK unit that integrates with the desk,” continues Glover. “We then played these back for the benefit of the bands and ourselves, so that we could tweak the mix. We used the console’s Snapshots facility extensively, which made moving between bands and MC links really easy.”
The console’s internal reverbs and delays were also used, with the TC 6000 across the vocals to provide an “external” control.
“It all worked perfectly,” concludes Glover. “Everyone was over the moon and the house system sounded superb with the digital desk driving it. The advantage of the digital desk in the Super Bowl is that the FOH mix position is situated in a position where we use around 95m of MADI cable. With such a long run on analog cable, we normally pick up hums, buzzes and system hiss. With the digital format we get none of that.”
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