Hungarian rental company Silent Session Ltd have supplied a complete Roland solution for broadcast, monitoring and recording of the hit show, ‘The Voice’ and now more recently for ‘Rising Star’ to Hungarian commercial television channel ‘TV2’.

The REAC (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication) based system which includes the Roland M-480 digital mixing console, Roland M-48 personal monitoring systems, Roland R-1000, R-44 and R-88 recorders and Roland Digital Snakes was initially specified to handle the PA and the stage monitoring for the recording stage on ‘The Voice’. For the television series ‘Rising Star’, the Roland system is also used to produce the broadcast sound for all of the music during the shows.

TV2 broadcast around five music shows each year and the entire Roland system is used for FOH, stage monitoring and broadcast mix for all of them. As the second-largest nationwide commercial television station in Hungary, TV2 predominantly targets viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, and reaches its audiences via terrestrial, cable, and satellite distribution. ‘Rising Star’ is an international reality television singing competition based on the Israeli singing competition HaKokhav HaBa (meaning "The Next Star") made by Keshet Broadcasting Ltd. The program format lets viewers vote for contestants via mobile apps.

Roland Eastern Europe (REE) supplied the system to Silent Session and have supported them in their work for TV2 over the past years. Márkus Gergő from Roland commented; ‘the flexibility of the M-480 and a REAC based system meant that monitoring, personal mixing, multi-channel live recording and playback could be integrated together easily and the system could be expanded in the future if necessary. The M-480 proved ideal as the main console for both the FOH job and the hub for the broadcast mix because of the amount of features it has in a small footprint- such as the large number of channels available, built in effects and delays on all mixing channels and outputs buses. A REAC based system also meant a fully digital setup with Cat5e cabling could be used.’

For the recording stage of the ‘Rising Star’ television shows, the Roland M-480 is used as the FOH console for mixing and for stage monitoring of the live performances in the studio. The input signal for FOH is provided by the S-4000 Digital Snake unit (configured with 24 outputs and 16 inputs) which is connected to one of two REAC ports on the M-480, with an S-4000D Splitter distributing the signal to five M-48 personal monitoring systems. The main contestant on stage is supported by backing musicians each using a Roland M-48 personal monitoring system. A second S-4000 (configured with 40 inputs and 4 outputs) provides a separate input taking up to 40 channels of audio into the R-1000 in the control room where the music is mixed for broadcast and recorded.

A REAC split is sent from the M-480 in the studio to a second M-480 in the music mix room setup for broadcasting the ‘Rising Star’ shows, the M-480 digital mixing console is used to mix the music for broadcast. Music recording is done by the Roland R-1000 recorder which is connected directly to the M-480 and to the S-MADI REAC Bridge with Cat5e and controlled directly from the console. The digital signal bridge is provided by the S-MADI REAC Bridge, a bi-directional signal converter between REAC and MADI. This bridge enables connectivity between MADI-equipped digital audio mixers/systems to any REAC-based devices. In this case, the S-MADI REAC Bridge enables a MADI connection to the broadcast mixer. Looped applause is added to the broadcast using a Roland R-44 recorder. Backing tracks and the SMPTE time code is provided by a Roland R-88 recorder.