When the organizers of the Panasonic Mercury Music Prize announced the nominations for this year’s event, at a press conference at London’s Royal Commonwealth Club, they asked Avesco Group company Creative Technology to provide all the audio visual support for the event.

Project manager Matt Hunter then involved fellow Avesco company MCL-London to handle the audio, and his colleague Simon Waters to provide a sophisticated playback rig, providing separate audio feeds from the digital mixing desk to the cameras. CT provided two 37" Hitachi plasma displays, which were used as relay monitors, and a Barco i6 high-resolution daylight screen, cut into an aperture - raised on a platform and suspended from behind as an integral part of the set design created by Frames Design and Build Ltd.

Cameras were supplied by the television companies but using Beta playback, CT flipped between Mercury’s graphic logo, held on a Sony DTS-375 framestore and short clips of the nominees, mixed on a Sony DFS-500 vision mixer, as Jools Holland announced the names in three separate segments.

MCL-London provided a conventional d&b left and right stack (augmented by front and rear fills), with playback from a pair of Denon MD105 minidiscs. Pete Clifton mixed the sound from a 24-channel Soundcraft K3 digital mixer, in turn sending live feeds to the cameras. Sony handheld mics, a pair of hardwired Shure SM58s and an AKG 747 lectern mic provided the live reinforcement for Jools Holland.

Summarised Matt Hunter: "With Avesco’s dedicated sound company Dimension Audio, on Commonwealth Games duty, Simon was great help in providing the sound equipment and ensuring best results.

The Mercury Music prize event will take place on September 17.


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