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HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA:
Less is more in broadcast audio, where the pressures
associated with getting a daily show on the air
make a simplified signal path almost a prerequisite
for the task. Veteran broadcast mixer Bart Chiate
has taken that philosophy to heart, installing 40
inputs of True Systems Precision 8 microphone preamplifiers
in place of mixing console channels to streamline
the recording path for live-to-tape music production
on the Jimmy Kimmel Show on ABC.
“They’re the microphone preamps for
the house band,” explains Chiate, who has
worked in broadcast for many years, as well as music
recording. “My setup is three cascaded Yamaha
02R-96V2s.” Chiate originally specified five
consoles, he says, but, happily, Kimmel Show audio
technician Dave Zeller suggested using the digital
console setup’s routing scene capabilities,
replacing two entire desks with just five rack spaces
of True 8-channel mic preamps.
Paul Sandweiss, another veteran mixer, and his Sound
Design Corporation, installed the audio system in
Chiate’s control room at the El Capitan Entertainment
Center, a former Masonic Temple at which the Jimmy
Kimmel Show is produced Monday through Thursday.
In fact, it was Sandweiss who first introduced Chiate
to the True Systems mic preamps. “There’s
a classical festival that I have recorded for 10
years, the Bellingham Festival of Music, near Seattle,
and I borrowed one of the Trues when I needed more
mic pres,” Chiate recalls.
“I was quite taken with it,” he continues.
“For me, the real test is the classical stuff.
They sound terrific. They’re great, and I
love them.”
The True Precision 8 units are only used for the
house band, reports Chiate, who is also typically
mixing guest artists on any one of three performances
areas: the theater lobby, a stage thrust or an outdoor
parking lot. “If I could use the Trues on
the guest band I would. But because of space considerations
they are in a rack on my lower left, so I decided
to use them on the house band, because that doesn’t
change very much. Once in a while there’s
a little tweak. But with the guest bands it’s
guerrilla warfare, so I went with the onboard console
mic pres.”
Elaborating on the routing setup at the Kimmel Show,
he says, “I do both house band and guest band
off the same console, off 48 channels. I can take
the onboard mic pres, which I use for the guest
band, or the True preamps, which are routed to analog
cards, and route them through another routing scene
to my recording chain.”
Chiate explains, “The way the routing scenes
work, the 02Rs output 48 channels of 24 bit/48k
AES into six Nuendo DDA8 format converters. Those
output AES, which is returned via TDIF to the console,
which then sends to an AMD Dual Opteron server running
Nuendo 3.0, and outputs TDIF to 48 channels of Tascam
DA-78 24-bit recorders. I run the tape as a backup;
the Nuendo is my primary record/playback source.
So everything is 24-bit/48kHz.”
The routing scenes and setup gives Chiate the flexibility
he needs in the high-pressure lead-up to the broadcast.
“I’m sending a pre-fader, pre-processed
microphone signal to my record devices and I mix
on the return side. If the production is behind
schedule we can dive in, do a camera block, I record
it, and then when the pressure is off I can spin
back and tweak, remix or set effects.”
On a daily basis the Kimmel Show might be hosting
artists as diverse as Slipknot, Erasure, Paul Vassar
or Blue Merge. But as Chiate admits, his heart is
elsewhere, with the festival in the Pacific Northwest,
where he has recorded for the last decade. “If
I could make a living doing that I would, but there’s
not a great deal of money in it. It’s a labor
of love; I go up in my vacation, because I love
classical music.”
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