Earlier in the year, thousands of dancers in full make-up and bright costumes, along with hundreds of elaborate floats accompanied by musicians and rolling PA trucks blasting samba music marched down Rio’s famed Sambódromo in celebration of this year’s Carnival. Shure microphones were heavily involved in vocalising the passion of the week-long event that marks the beginning of Lent.
Televised globally by Rede Globo, the fourth largest broadcaster in the world, Carnival is a giant celebration where samba schools, which consist of thousands of performers, compete for bragging rights as the official winner of Carnival. The schools prepare all year for this one performance where they are meticulously judged on their costumes, choreography, floats, music, harmony, and overall theme. Music and harmony play such an important role in the outcome and all of the bands have to endure a kilometre long, one-hour performance.
Representatives from Shure worked with Pride Music, Shure’s Brazilian Distributor, to provide RF co-ordination and technical support for Rede Globo and Gabisom, Brazil’s largest live sound company. They co-ordinated and monitored the use of more than 78 channels of wireless frequencies using Shure Wireless Workbench (WWB) 5.0 software and UHF-R wireless receivers.
“Our goal was to give full-time technical support to the Gabisom team by managing and monitoring RF using an external scanner that talks to Shure’s Wireless Workbench software,†said Marinho Alves, sales manager for Pride Music. “Because of the constantly changing RF environment, the Wireless Workbench RF scanner and backup frequency features were critical in allowing us to recognise and respond to any RF problems, as the trucks accompanied the performers down the Sambódromo.â€
In all, 30 UHF-R channels, 12 UHF wireless microphone systems using SM58 and Beta 58A capsules, and 12 PSM700 personal monitor systems accompanied the schools on their performances.