SANREMO, ITALY, JUNE 29, 2010 — Aviom helped with the performances at Italy's 60th annual Sanremo Music Festival by supplying more than 25 A-16II Personal Mixers, via Sisme Spa, to the show's entire orchestra. Each year, the popular Italian song contest hosts musicians from all over Italy, who perform original Italian language pieces. The program is televised, and the artists are ultimately judged by viewers watching at home. Described best as a battle of the bands combined with any popular televised music contest, the Sanremo Music Festival is held annually at Teatro Ariston in the city of Sanremo, and has been broadcast live on RAI Uno since 1955. This year's 60th anniversary festival was viewed by over 10 million people each night.
One of the major challenges producers face when broadcasting this show is the use of different conductors during each performance, while the orchestra remains the same. To help maintain consistency between numbers during this year's festival, every member of the orchestra utilized the Aviom A-16II Personal Mixer (in previous years only the rhythmic section used the Aviom equipment). The 16 presets on each of the A-16II mixers proved to be a perfect asset for musicians and engineers alike, allowing them to adjust their settings during sound check and save those settings for the live performances later each day.
“The remarkable audio quality and ease of use of the system gave the musicians an excellent monitoring signal,” says Andrea Guerranti, Sisme Spa technical manager. “RAI technicians designed a simple and efficient audio network for the entire orchestra, which faces the daunting task of performing with several different musicians and conductors each night.”
The Aviom A-16II enabled individual performers to create custom monitor mixes tailored to their individual needs. Designed for use in live performances, as well as in the studio, the personal mixers provide each performer control over channel volume, grouping, pan, stereo spread, master volume and tone.
In addition to several different performances, the festival divided contestants into two categories: professional Italian musicians and aspiring Italian singers. The professionals were given the opportunity to perform their songs in duet with international stars such as Nelly Furtado, famous Italian singers Mario Biondi and Teresa Slaguiero, and this year's guest performers Jennifer Lopez, Mary J. Blige and Tokio Hotel.
“The orchestra is aware that the audiences, as well as the special celebrity guest singers, expect nothing but the greatest performances each night,” says Guerranti. “The Aviom gear allowed the orchestra to perform beyond the best of its ability – which is especially crucial when playing alongside these world-famous artists.”
Ultimately, a winner was chosen from each of the categories and, as part of the prize, their songs are now being played on Italian radio. The professional winner is also entered into the world famous Eurovision Song Contest, held among countries that are active members of the European Broadcasting Union and best known for having helped launch the careers of ABBA and Celine Dion.
This year's Sanremo Music Festival winners were professional singer Valerio Scanu, who sang the original piece "Per tutte le volte che…" (For all the times that…) and newcomer Tony Maiello, with his song "Il linguaggio della resa” (The language of surrender). At the age of 19, Scanu was the youngest male winner in the history of the festival.
Aviom pioneered personal mixing with its Pro16® Monitor Mixing System and continues to break new ground with the revolutionary Pro64® Series of audio networking products. With tens of thousands of products in the field today, Aviom has set the standard for high performance, scalable digital solutions. All Aviom systems harness the power of A-Net®, Aviom's innovative digital audio technology that simplifies system design while enhancing flexibility and fidelity. All Aviom products are designed, tested, and manufactured in the USA.