Beijing, China (September 10, 2018)—Zhang Hong Guang, one of China’s most popular composers, filled the Cadillac Arena in Beijing this past July when his music was performed for an audience of 18,000 fans. Placed at the FOH mix position was a Stage Tec Aurus platinum desk, making its debut as a FOH console in China.
The AURUS platinum was equipped with 32 faders and integrated into a Nexus network with six Base Devices and a STAR router. CCTV, China’s national state broadcaster, recorded the event, which aired on the CCTV-3 music and entertainment channel. IFTT was the technical service provider.
The 60-piece orchestra, a choir of 50 singers and a band with 11 musicians, 16 soloists and two presenters resulted in more than 200 mix channels and 80 buses, which engineers kept track of by using the AURUS VCA hierarchy feature, enabling instruments to be grouped. VCAs were mixed instead of individual channels, combined with the Aurus spill function.
To accommodate the large number of audio channels, the Aurus platinum was fully populated with seven RMDQ DSP units. The microphones were converted to digital signals without analog preamplification directly at the Nexus’ mic inputs with 32-bit resolution using the True Match process. A total of 16 XMIC microphone boards with eight channels each (128 in total) were installed in the Nexus Base Devices for the purpose.
A second performance in Shenzhen is already planned for the end of the year. Zhang Hong Guang is a famous composer of Chinese opera and dance theatre, and also writes film and television scores as well as pop and ethnic music. The Cadillac Arena was opened in 2008 and hosted the Olympic basketball tournament in the same year. It will serve as the ice hockey venue during the winter Olympics in 2022.
Stage Tec • www.stagetec.com
