France - With audiences of over 5m every Saturday night, the French version of Strictly Come Dancing (Danse avec les Stars), has proved almost as popular as its British counterpart. The live show is broadcast from the same TV studio in Paris that hosted the live shows of last season's The Voice. Meanwhile, recording of 'the Blinds' and 'the Battles' for next season's The Voice is going on in a different studio. TV audio solutions provider, Silence! has provided APG Uniline systems for both shows. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel, Plus 4 Audio who supply systems for Strictly Come Dancing in the UK, also supplied a Uniline system for the special Children In Need edition of Strictly from Wembley Arena in front of a live audience of 6,000 people.
Back in France, having built their formidable reputation on being brand-agnostic and supplying the best system for the job in hand rather than what happens to be in the warehouse at the time, it is a testament to the quality and versatility of Uniline that the Silence! team decided to use it for both shows.
"Based on our experience with Uniline for The Voice last season, we had no hesitation in specifying it again this year," declared Gilles Hugo, one of the co-founders of Silence! "The system has already earned its stripes in a TV studio environment, proving that it can deliver great sound even in a difficult environment where the constraints of working with lights and cameras mean that we can't fly the system the way we'd like to."
This is always an issue in a TV studio, and particularly where live shows are concerned. In the case of Danse avec les Stars where there is a live band for every show, Silence ! had to work around a dancefloor with a very sophisticated lighting design. Much of the scenery and ambience is created via projection which comes from high above the dancefloor. As a result, Silence ! couldn't fly any speakers in the 'cube' above the dancefloor occupied by the projectors. "We ended up way, way up in the roof!" laughed Gilles. "However, this is where Uniline really comes into its own. We can get decent sound out of the system even when circumstances are far from ideal and we can't optimize the system to its best advantage. This is NOT true of every system."
