If there is one television event were audio is key, it is during the Eurovision Song Contest. Audio engineers from German broadcaster NDR had prepared meticulously to make sure all countries would get a (potentially) winning sound.
Demanding performance
At the Song Contest the stakes are high, not only for the singers, but also for the hundreds of millions of viewers and listeners around the world. One of the reasons why the Song Contest is so demanding, is that all singers perform live. The national delegations compare their live performance with how their voices were mixed in studio recordings before the event. So the audio engineers doing the live mixing are facing a somewhat unfair competition: providing top-quality without having any chance to polish or redo any second of the song, as you can do endlessly in a studio set up. Add to that the combination of an extremely powerful PA system in the stadium and the need to provide a redundant stereo and multi-channel signal for the whole event, and you can imagine why it is both an honour and challenge to mix the Song Contest.
Loudness meters
One of the professionals performing 'audio magic' this year was Tonmeister Askan Siegfried (NDR), who was responsible for mixing the multi-channel audio mix. Being a key member of the EBU Loudness Group PLOUD, Askan set up several loudness meters to evaluate the level of the songs. The result was good: "On the loudness meters we could easily see the songs matched very well, especially when we clipped them together for the recap sequences."
Askan Siegfried in one of the temporary audio control rooms in Düsseldorf.
On the mixing desk several loudness meters are visible. Right image: the audio crew.