Recording and Production in the News

Prism Sound helps Ray Lo record the recent People's Republic of China's national anthem

Hong Kong - September 2006: The concert hall at Hong Kong's Cultural Centre recently played host to a very special recording project - a re-working of the People's Republic of China's National Anthem featuring the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Dutch conductor Maestro Edo de Waart, and the Hong Kong Children's Choir.

The new version of the Anthem replaces a previous recording that was completed last year without the choir.

Engineer Ray Lo, head of Audio Recording and Mastering Services (HK), recorded the performance using a Prism Sound ADA-8 converter to convert the analog signal for the main 8 microphone array channels into digital PCM format for the Genex GX9048 48-track multi-track recorder.

"We used a total of 24 microphones for this performance," Ray Lo explains. "We felt the Prism Sound ADA-8 provided the highest quality sound for our recorder, with the added advantage of 8 channel analog output on top of the digital output of the Prism Sound unit. Therefore the analogue output of the ADA-8 allowed us to feed a total of 24 analog channels to the Sony Oxford mixer on-site at the concert hall. An Alesis ML-9600 Masterlink was used to generate an on-the-fly CD for archival purposes and as a play-back track, which was broadcast through the concert hall's PA system so that the orchestra and the children could mime the song without microphones for repeated film shoots."

Ray Lo was also responsible for recording the earlier choir-less version of the National Anthem, which was well received by the Hong Kong SAR Government.

The new version was mixed at Lo's own mastering studio in Hong Kong and will be used for the Government's October 1st National Day flag raising ceremony and for other state occasions in the future. A 50-second film of the orchestra and choir, shot on 35mm film during the performance, will also be screened every night on Hong Kong television channels as a prelude to the 6pm and 6.30pm news bulletins.

"Everyone was thrilled with the new version during the initial playback through the concert hall PA System, including the conductor," Lo adds. "I'm now hoping that the mainland Chinese Government will one day use my recording throughout China, although the final decision on this lies with the Chinese authorities."