Red TX Capture Audio From Vodafone TBA 2008 Gig

Broadcast sound specialists Red TX was in Edinburgh last month to capture the audio from the first Vodafone TBA gig of 2008.
Introduced last year, the Vodafone TBA gigs started out as small, secret venue gigs in front of an invited audience and with just one artist on stage. However, this year the format has been expanded and Vodafone TBA is now taking the form of multi-artist mini festivals, the first of which took place last month in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens. This was broadcast on Channel 4 with just a half-hour delay.
Three bands took part in the gig - the Sugababes, the Feeling and 'odd-poptastic' trio, the Hoosiers. They performed live on the Ross Stage in front of an invited audience and also gave exclusive back-stage interviews to presenter and XFM DJ Dave Berry, which were subsequently broadcast as part of Channel 4's coverage.
Red TX was commissioned to handle the live broadcast audio by Initial, an Endemol company and one of the UK's leading entertainment content creators and producers,
Tammy McKendrich, Production Manager for Vodafone TBA project, said: "Red TX provides a professional and reliable service. I have used the team on the majority of my music events and will now go nowhere else."
Red TX used its main mobile recording truck, which is equipped with a Studer Vista 8 console. The truck was parked 220 metres from the stage and was linked to the on-stage microphones via two fibre optic cables. Red TX director Conrad Fletcher, who has been sound designer on numerous television projects including 'Lily Allen' and 'The Weakest Link', manned the controls, assisted by engineers Ollie Nesham and Gary McBride.
Fletcher said: "We had to work very fast because there was only a half-hour deferred relay between recording and broadcast. This gave the production company time to drop in interviews and backstage footage for the Channel 4 broadcast. We recorded every band as live, along with audience FX, and mixed on board the truck. Our audio was then fed to CTV's scanner where a team of editors were on hand to compile the programme before it was transmitted to Channel 4 in London via a satellite uplink. We had no more than four minutes to handle any re-mixes that might be required, but fortunately, due to careful preparation during the previous day's rehearsals, we didn't have to re-mix anything because the producers were very happy with our first mixes."
The Edinburgh Vodafone TBA is the first of two gigs planned in the lead up to the Vodafone Live Music Awards this autumn.
(KMcA/NS)