2005 American Idol

The fourth season of American Idol recently concluded at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, California. There seemed to be no loss of interest by the show’s fifty million viewers who tuned in to watch who would be crowned the fourth American Idol. From its season beginning at CBS Television City, to the finale at the Kodak Theater, the show continues to post extremely high ratings in the world of reality television. The American public cannot get enough of watching amateur singers either belt out great renditions of classic tunes or simply crash and burn during their performances. It is a successful formula that has garnered the show much success and has elevated the reality television category to a high standard.

Although the contestants on the show are amateurs, the show’s production staff is made up of industry heavyweights that demand top performance from all vendors involved. ATK Audiotek was chosen to provide the sound reinforcement for our fourth consecutive years and as the show progresses from one season to the next, the intricacy of the sound system grows as well.

This year, the show had the performers singing along with a professional band and again, had the judges exchanging dialogue within an audience packed, noisy environment. Designing a sound system capable of handling both jobs is a daunting task. ATK Audiotek was able to rely on its past success’s on similar shows, utilizing multiple zone coverage areas, to accomplish these needs. One particular problem area concerned the dialogue between the contestants and the judges. ATK Audiotek used under-seat speakers to increase coverage of the dialogue segments while still keeping the overall ambient sound at a minimum level. But those small speakers can only be utilized for specific tasks and when it came time to bring musical director Ricky Minor and his band to proper concert levels, ATK Audiotek relied on its JBL line array system to provide that high quality sound found on all ATK Audiotek events.

The hopeful contestants, although new to this level of production, needed to hear themselves with the band in order to calm nerves and offer their best performance. ATK Audiotek responded to these needs and implemented an entirely separate stage monitor mix system. This system is normally reserved for Idol’s finale, but this season ATK Audiotek provided one of its proprietary custom monitor systems from the start of the season, giving the performers a level of monitoring comparable to what today’s top artists have been experiencing on their tours. Even the judges had their own monitor system that allowed them to hear specifically how each contestant sounded with the band.

When the show reached its final round, the production was moved to the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, home of the Academy Awards. The sound system then had to be completely redesigned for this venue since it is vastly different from the setup at CBS Television City.

As the show gears up for its fifth season, ATK Audiotek is already looking ahead to provide the production with another great season of sound. Regardless of an amateur singer hitting the high note or falling flat, our guarantee is that those notes will be heard exactly as they are sung.