Working within Covid-19 restrictions, recent coverage of ABB FIA Formula E 2019/2020 races saw the BBC make good use of Bubblebee Industries technology for sound.

Normally the fully electric, single-seat cars race around major city centres in front of thousands of spectators. Instead, the 2019/2020 season was completed with six races over nine days, behind closed doors, at Berlin’s Templehoff airport. Live TV coverage was provided by host broadcasters Aurora Media Worldwide and North One TV (Formula E TV) who supply the international and English host broadcast feed to channels such as the BBC, Eurosport and Mediaset.

The Vienna Volksoper (People’s Opera) is Europe’s leading operetta house and Vienna’s largest theatre for opera, musicals, classical concerts and ballet. The venue is also the first in Vienna to open its doors to the public after the summer break, but more importantly in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, with a performance of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus on 1 September followed by a revival of Cole Porter’s classic musical, Kiss Me Kate on 2 September.

Both will benefit from the recent installation of a new KV2 audio system, which is also the first to use KV2’s new Control & Diagnostics Tool for remote system management and control.

Taiwanese Madopop star Michelle Pan (Pan Yueyun) delivered a stunning performance in front of 2,500 enthusiastic, socially distanced fans, friends and musicians at the Taipei International Convention Centre (TICC). Despite its reduced capacity – the venue is primarily used for corporate presentations and conferences and holds up to 3,000 – there was no audio compromise, with Winly Engineering providing an L-Acoustics K Series for FOH.

Winly faced numerous acoustical limitations within the vernue in delivering uniform sound across the entire space. Winly FOH engineer Nova Lo, systems engineer Scott Kuo, and monitor engineer Andre Lai played key roles.

June saw a spectacular concert hosted at Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day. One of the only concerts allowed during Russia’s Covid-19 lockdown, it featured artists from Russia’s theatre, opera and cinema worlds, accompanied by the All-Russian Youth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Yuri Bashmet.

The concert was broadcast live on the state-owned, Russia-1 TV channel. Rental company Stage Audio was chosen as a technical support contractor for the show.

South Korea’s KBS public broadcaster has upgraded TV production facilities at its headquarters in Seoul, with IP technology from Lawo as part of an extensive renovation project. The installation, which includes two new Lawo consoles – an mc²96 Grand Production Console and an mc²36 ‘all-in-one’ console – is part of KBS’ move to a completely new IP-based production workflow.

KBS’ new Lawo mixing consoles replace systems that were no longer able to meet requirements for current and future productions. Like all Lawo broadcast products, the mc²96 and mc²36 mixers are native IP consoles, with Ravenna/AES67 built in for industry-standard networking, flexibility, scalability and efficiency.