The Royal Albert Hall hosted a concert for This Day Africa Rising in October to raise awareness and discuss solutions for the ongoing unrest throughout Africa. The event included performances by Christina Aguilera and Seal, as well as a fashion show featuring supermodel Naomi Campbell and a keynote speech by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.  

NEP Visions was contracted by the production company Media Underground to capture standard definition audio and video for the event. After considering the needs of the show and the limited space allocation, Visions supplied its D10 truck along with seven cameras, a Steadicam, grip equipment and full audio multitracking facilities.

In order to split the workload for the multitrack recordings of the performers and audio from the presenters and other simple sources, Visions’ David O’Carroll manned an additional mobile audio van hired for the performance.

O’Carroll created multitrack sessions of the performances with SSL’s MT Axiom desk in front of two Pyramix hard disc recorders. The individual tracks were sent over digital fibre cables from I Green’s PA system to connect directly with the SSL desk for mixing. The SSL desk was augmented with a Briscasti reverb, TC Electronics M5000 processor and dbx compressors.

Audio from the mobile audio van was then fed to two audio mixers in the OB10 van, who used the van’s Calrec Zeta desk to mix the presenters and audio feeds from the fashion show and other events alternating with the artists. Splitting the audio responsibilities with the OB10 van allowed O’Carroll to prepare for each new performer in between sets and check that the lines were ready to record before they hit the stage.

All of Visions’ OB vans use Calrec’s digital consoles. According to O’Carroll: “The Calrec desks have proved to be brilliant. The D10 was originally designed for a very specific Sky sports contract.

Visions’ looked at a number of different desks by a number of different manufacturers and Calrec came up on top in just about every test.”

All the audio to Vision’s trucks is typically supplied by analog multicore systems as the team finds it the most flexible and reliable way of working while the trucks are connected to each other via MADI. Calrec has also been integral in maintaining an analog signal reception due to its onboard AD converters. “It is a digital board, but we treat it as an analog board and connect the lines straight to the console,” explains O’Carroll. “The board also has a lot of digital connections that we use to feed the routers in the trucks.”

When D10 was built, a Neve compressor was installed alongside the Zeta desk, but when the engineers grew familiar and confident in the Calrec compressors, the Neves became obsolete.

While the SSL desk used in the mobile audio van is not O’Carroll’s board of choice, he feels that it is a very capable desk that made connecting the digital fibre connections from the stage easy.

Last minute line-up changes caused a small hiccup for the show, but once the event was running, it was business as usual for the crew. The Africa Rising show was shot in standard definition and recorded in stereo, although Visions is often asked to do 5.1 recordings. Its recent work with the Nelson Mandela birthday celebration at Hyde Park was done in full 5.1 surround sound.

A limited amount of space was given to the company for the show. Two generators placed in the vicinity forced Visions to use the smaller D10 truck. If more space had been available, they could have used a truck with a multitrack recording function rather than hiring a separate mobile audio van for the event. The situation was caused by a common case of placing talent’s needs over crew requirements, as the generators were used to power curling tongs and hair dryers for the models in the fashion show.  
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