Shure UHF-R, Wireless Workbench 5.0 Software on Parade at Carnaval

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, March 24, 2009 — Last month, thousands of dancers in full make-up and bright costumes, along with hundreds of elaborate floats accompanied by musicians and rolling PA trucks blasting samba music marched down Rio’s famed Sambódromo in celebration of this year’s Carnaval. Song after song, samba school after samba school, Shure microphones took charge of vocalizing the passion of the week-long event that marks the beginning of Lent.

Televised globally by Rede Globo, the fourth largest broadcaster in the world, Carnaval is a giant celebration where samba schools, which consist of thousands of performers, compete for bragging rights as the official winner of Carnaval. The schools prepare all year for this one performance where they are meticulously judged on their costumes, choreography, floats, music, harmony, and overall theme. Because music and harmony play such an important role in the outcome, and due to the hectic outdoor RF environment, all of the bands that performed chose Shure wireless microphones to accompany them on their kilometer long, one-hour performance.

Representatives from Shure worked with Pride Music, Shure’s Brazilian Distributor, to provide RF coordination and technical support for Rede Globo and Gabisom, Brazil’s largest live sound company. They successfully coordinated and monitored the use of more than 78 channels of wireless frequencies using Shure Wireless Workbench (WWB) 5.0 software and UHF-R wireless receivers.

“Our goal was to give full-time technical support to the Gabisom team by managing and monitoring RF using an external scanner that talks to Shure’s Wireless Workbench software,” said Marinho Alves, Sales Manager for Pride Music. “Because of the constantly changing RF environment, the Wireless Workbench RF scanner and backup frequency features were critical in allowing us to recognize and respond to any RF problems, as the trucks accompanied the performers down the Sambódromo.”

In all, 30 UHF-R channels, 12 UHF wireless microphone systems using SM58® and Beta 58A capsules, and 12 PSM®700 personal monitor systems accompanied the schools on their performances without a failure, thanks to daily frequency scans and coordination by Alves and Gabriel Benitez, Training and Education Manager for Shure.

“During one of my Wireless Workbench scans, I noticed two intermittent DTV stations and one of those channels landed right on one of the UHF-R handheld transmitters,” said Benitez. “Since this occurred during one of the performances and there weren’t any spares available, there was no chance to swap it out or reprogram the transmitter. Fortunately, UHF-R is an extremely agile wireless microphone system, so we didn’t experience any dropouts.”