Another year and another spectacular MTV Awards ceremony. Copenhagen hosted the biggest, boldest, blingiest ever, and the red carpet was graced by a well-heeled royalty of rock that included a glittering cast of A-list performers, presenters and special guests. And Sennheiser was again the first choice of the elite with Keane, Nelly Furtado, Rhianna, Jet and Snoop all electing to use Sennheiser SKM 5200 wireless microphone systems. With all but two of the visiting artists on Sennheiser mics, detente was maintained by the fact that across the board, every personal monitor on the night was Sennheiser.

Justin Timberlake, as well as picking up gongs for Best Pop and the stiffly contested Best Male, presented the show using a specially designed gold SKM 5200 handheld fitted with the Neumann KM 105 capsule. SKM 5200’s were used for all presentation duties during the event, with Justin’s mic providing something significantly different from the standard colours to ensure the evening’s host stood out in all ways.

Derrick Zieba was Sound Designer for the Bella Centre show, working alongside a crack team from Britannia Row, with local company DPA Sound handling the live sound from the town square. Zieba explains, "One of our goals was to create a sound reinforcement system with a huge wow factor for the audience, whilst providing outstanding audio excitement for our TV viewers. There were 3,000 in the Bella Centre with an additional 7,500 in the town square, and knowing that there’s a potential TV audience of a staggering 1.4 billion, we had to keep our wits about us."

Copenhagen in November can present its own problems as witnessed during rehearsals in the town square the day before transmission. To say it was cold would be an understatement. Snow was blowing horizontally in a wind torn plaza, the stage had to be closed, and various crews were left with frozen fingers crossed hoping that the weather would ease in time for the live broadcast.

Zieba continues, "I have always enjoyed working with Sennheiser as their technical back-up and support has always been outstanding. Over many years, they have always provided faultless radio and even in the most hostile wireless areas, they always come up trumps. With virtually all artists on the night choosing Sennheiser mics and in-ears, it meant that I could go into a live show with total confidence."

"The SKM 5200 is really the only choice where broadcast or recording is concerned. You can get a lot of dynamics from them, and they're a very rich-sounding mic. They won't overload the front end on you and have such a great pattern with a really smooth sound."

The Bella Centre stage itself was 150ft in diameter with a split stage in the round. This presented concerns for wireless integrity over that distance and was a particular challenge for stable in-ear reception. This gave Zieba the opportunity to utilise the new Sennheiser A5000-CP circular polarized antenna which allowed faultless RF coverage throughout the arena. This new passive helical antenna provides high gain, virtually no multipath problems, and superb RF performance over the entire UHF broadcast band. Designed for the toughest transmission conditions, the A5000-CP can be used as both a transmit and receive device, making it ideal for radio microphones and in-ears. Unlike conventional helical antennas, the gain of the A5000-CP is also far superior to that of conventional antennae, and covers the entire UHF range from 450 to 960 MHz. This flexibility makes setting up complex RF transmission systems much easier.