Sony Professional Digital Wireless Audio hired by The Apprentice

AMSTERDAM (IBC Booth 12.A10), 9 September, 2011: Sony Professional has today announced that its market leading digital wireless professional audio products underpinned the production of leading reality show, The Apprentice, as it switched from analogue to digital audio production workflow.  Sony’s DWX range, which provided the complete audio solution and included DWT-01 transmitters, DWR-S01D portable receivers and DWR-R01D rack receivers for boardroom scenes, was first utilised on the Junior Apprentice and will be used on its primetime counterpart, due to air in 2012.

Meredith Broadcast Audio, audio suppliers for the show, invested in Sony Professional DWX range of digital audio products, supported by Sony Specialist Dealer CVP as The Apprentice completely modernised its audio production equipment.  The Sony solution met the need for more compact wireless microphone receivers and greater flexibility in both the production and post-production process.

The audio acquisition solution gives location recordists total flexibility and the ability to access any combination of performers within a specific scene.  This is achieved via increased channel agility and access to up to 48 channels from a single frequency span – crucial to capturing audio in reality TV where situations are constantly changing and action is unpredictable.  Similarly, digital audio workflow offers significant time and cost savings in post-production, as the best audio clips from any given scene can be easily identified and slotted directly into the timeline.

Richard Meredith, director of Meredith Broadcast Audio commented: “The Apprentice’s switch to digital was the first major UK reality production to do so with Sony Professional audio products and represents a constantly increasing industry demand for more streamlined workflow in audio acquisition.  Thanks to its flexibility in production and post-production and the increased number of channels available, the solution has already proved highly successful and since its use on The Apprentice we’ve seen other productions specify the Sony solution as part of their acquisition package.”

Markus Warlich, Professional Audio Product Specialist, noted: “It was no surprise to see Sony Professional’s market-leading transmitters and receivers chosen to capture the audio for one of the UK’s most popular reality shows, and the fact that the package used on The Apprentice has been specifically requested by other productions is testament to the quality of our professional audio products.  We expect to see further uptake of the solution as an increasing number of programmes make the switch from analogue to digital audio acquisition.”

The professional audio solutions package supplied to The Cruet Company for The Apprentice includes DWT-BO1 transmitters, DWR-SO1D portable receivers in DWA-O1D slots for location bags and DWR-RO1D rack receivers for Lord Sugar’s boardroom.  The overall revision of the audio acquisition package has given greater flexibility in covering the constantly changing filming scenarios in reality and live television productions, and also accounts for time and cost savings in both production and post-production.