The Studer Vista X control console was the main tool used for Eurovision live shows and rehearsals, producing flawless sound as a result.
Last 2023 Eurovision final, which was held at Liverpool, UK, on May 13th, attracted over 160 million people worldwide to watch the song contest and included one long week of rehearsals along the previous week. During all rehearsals and televised live fina, music was mixed on the Mixbus, an audio outside broadcast facility that integrates Studer Vista X console, an Evertz Studer solution.
Owned by BAFTA winner Conrad Fletcher’s sounDesign company, the Mixbus was chosen for Eurovision because it integrates a high-end equipment, including a Studer Vista X console that has the ability to handle complex and technically challenging live music shows.
A long time Studer user, Fletcher ordered his new console just three months before the event as a replacement for his old Studer Vista 8 console.“The Vista 8 had always done a sterling job, but I’d been wanting to upgrade to a Vista X for some time in order to carry my business forward for the next 10 years,” he explains. “Winning the Eurovision project vindicated my decision to invest. The type of projects we do, especially live to cinema that makes up 50% of our workload, are complex and I honestly believe Studer is the only console manufacturer that can handle them. Nothing else comes close.”
Cooperation between Fletcher and Evertz, which had recently moved all Studer manufacturing to its factory in Canada, was key to ensuring the console was built and installed in time for the contest.
Fletcher’s Vista X has 52 faders and a control surface that weighs 150 kilos. It is also 7cm higher than his old Vista 8, which meant the back end of The Mixbus had to be rebuilt to raise the speakers and video monitors above the meter bridge.
Like its predecessor, the console retains Studer’s patented Vistonics user interface and added FaderGlow, along with a new Infinity Core, that provides control of 1,000 or more audio DSP channels with superb sonic quality and more than 5,000 inputs and outputs. To ensure system redundancy that is so vital for live events, Vista X has four processor Quad Star technology and CPU-based DSP that allows two completely independent DSP cores to run in parallel with ‘instant’ change over.
Fletcher adds that the console’s configuration system is also quicker to work because it runs natively on modern x86 CPU processors that are found across Evertz live media production product lines. It also has system reliability with four independent processors providing the necessary backup for shows as complex as Eurovision.
