The largest music TV program in Japan, the "NHK's Red & White Song Contest" takes place every year on the New Years Eve. Half of the Japanese population watches the show. The last year was the 57th since it’s started and there also was an open experiment of real-time screening of the show with Super Hi-Vision and 22.2 Multi Audio Channel at "NHK Hureai Hall" which is built next to the NHK hall.

Literally the program divides the most popular music artists of the year into competing teams of red and white. The "red" team is composed of all female artists (or groups with female vocals), while the "white" team is all male (or groups with male vocals). The honor of performing on Kohaku is strictly by invitation, so only the most successful J-Pop artists and Enka singers can perform. In addition to the actual music performances, the costumes, hairstyles, makeup, dancing, and lighting are also important. Even today, a performance on Kohaku is said to be a big highlight in a singer's career because of the show's large reach.

At this event, many RME devices were installed to transfer over 70 audio channels from the studio in the NHK Broadcasting center where they had an orchestra to NHK Hureai Hall via MADI fiber optical cable.

70 channels have been transferred from the broadcasting center and RME MADI Bridge received them and distributed. One of the distributed signals was transferred to the master DAW "Fairlight Dream Satellite" which recorded 96ch real-time. At the same time 2 x RME ADI-6432 converted the MADI signal into AES/EBU and passed the signals onto Digidesign ProTools HD with D-Control and YAMAHA PM1D to mix down into the 22 channels. The signals were sent back to an ADI-6432 and then to a RME MADI Bridge that distributed into three sets of signals. One went to the FAIRLIGHT Marlin system to record, the second one was to the impressing power amp system of the NHK Hureai hall and the last one was sent to the 22.2ch audio data decoder.

Installed RME devices

7 x ADI-6432
2 x MADI Bridge