THE LEXICON 960L MULTI-CHANNEL DIGITAL EFFECTS SYSTEM IS THE AUDIO PROCESSOR OF
CHOICE FOR
OSCAR NIGHT BROADCAST
-- Remote Recording's Silver Truck celebrated its 15th Academy Award Show broadcast,
while the Lexicon 960L kept the sound consistently great --
SALT LAKE CITY, UT, March 20, 2008 -- Lexicon, a Harman International Company
(NYSE-HAR), was proud to be an integral part of this year's OSCAR Night telecast.
The 80th Annual Academy Awards, broadcast Sunday, February 24th, 2008, on ABC,
featured remarkable sound, thanks to the signal processing of the Lexicon 960L
Multi-Channel Digital Effects System and the brilliant work of Music Mixer Tommy
Vicari and Remote Recording's broadcast audio Silver Truck.
Vicari and Remote Recording handled over 100 inputs from more than 70
instrumentalists and vocalists in the pit at Los Angeles' Kodak Theater. Vicari
created a 2.1 mix of the orchestra and choir, sent from the Silver Truck to the main
broadcast truck. There it was added to other audio elements and configured into a
5.1 surround mix for broadcast. In addition to these live music elements, Vicari
also provided numerous pre-recorded play-ons, play-offs and commercial bumpers he
had recorded at Capitol Records Studios in Hollywood.
Each of these many audio sources was enhanced with the processing power of the
Lexicon 960L. "I use the 960L on virtually everything," stated Vicari, who has spent
significant time editing and customizing the 960L's many preset sounds. "I used the
'Taj Mahal' setting on the choir. I shortened it and made the space a bit smaller. I
also set the Predelay based on the tempo of the song - that's a technique that
really lets you use as much reverb as you want, without creating tempo echoes that
could muddy the image." Vicari added that the 960L's reverbs are especially
spectacular on pad-type sounds, such as strings, woodwinds and synthesizers. "The
960L's rooms give you a lot of possibilities to create distance and dimension on
thick sounds like that," he explained. Since the 960L is an eight-channel processor,
Vicari was able to use four distinct and discreet stereo programs simultaneously for
the show.
In addition, mixing for live broadcast has its own unique pitfalls--for instance,
multiple compression stages, phasing and satellite transmissions can alter the sound
significantly before reaching the viewer's home TV sets, which made Vicari all the
more happy to have the 960L at his disposal: "I've learned over the years that you
need to add a bit more reverb to a broadcast mix in order to still be able to hear
the reverb by the time it reaches the home television set," he said. "The 960L gives
you very accurate control over the sound, so I'm able to be especially precise in
how I apply it for broadcast."
Dave Hewitt, President of Remote Recording, which has done the show's music mix for
15 years, is also a fan of the 960L, both for its sound and its reliability. "The
960L is an amazing machine. We've had the 960L on the Silver Truck for about a year,
but we've always been a Lexicon facility," citing the Lexicon 480L, 224XL and other
Lexicon processors and reverbs that the Silver and White Trucks of Remote Recording
have long made a standard part of their audio arsenal. "The signal path for the
Academy Awards' sound is extremely high end - Studer and Neve consoles and Millennia
pre-amps - so only a Lexicon can keep the processing at that level."