The fifteenth season of The Voice – La plus belle voix on TF1 used four Solid State Logic Live L550 Plus mixing consoles — two for broadcast, one at FOH, and one for monitors — linked over SSL’s Blacklight II MADI system. Equipment was supplied by Algam Enterprise; touring and integration specialist S Group, based in Alès, France, oversaw the production. The season concluded May 30 with 19-year-old Lady O from Switzerland winning.
The four consoles divided the workload across clearly defined roles. The monitor console set gains for the orchestra and sent sources to the other positions. In the audio control room at Studio du Lendit in Paris, one broadcast console handled the music mix, while a second took that stereo output and added vocals, backing vocals, and additional elements for the final broadcast mix. FOH engineer Jean-Marc Aringoli retained gain control over vocals only, enabling fast reaction for broadcast loudness compliance.
Redundant MADI links over fiber allowed engineers to share reffects between positions and creating string premixes to reduce FOH channel count
“Sharing resources is very easy with SSL, where we share MADI. It is a way of duplicating our sources and securing things,” says Jean-Marc Aringoli, FOH/Broadcast Engineer. “The ease of use with this console lies precisely in being able to bring sources back very quickly to wherever you want them and, with the multi-layer system, to organise your layout properly so you can find your way around very easily and follow the show as consistently as possible. Everything is done internally with the Effects Rack. The whole orchestra is managed with effects, both in terms of dynamics and pure effects such as reverb, gate, delays and so on. Query is a very, very good tool — it lets me very quickly check what is going into my stem and redo the levels easily.”
“Seeing our consoles adapted so successfully to high-pressure broadcast environments like The Voice is a real testament to the flexibility of the platform. Productions like this are continually pushing the technology in new directions, and that is precisely what makes the SSL Live system so rewarding to work with,” says Philippe Guerinet, International Sales Director, Solid State Logic.
