London, UK (June 20, 2025)—Capturing the sound of a piano being played in a busy train station for a U.K. reality TV show was no simple task, but award-winning sound supervisor Richard Meredith rose to the challenge.
The Piano, which just wrapped its third season, is an acclaimed U.K. reality competition that invites undiscovered, amateur pianists to perform emotionally charged music amid the bustling sounds of some of the country’s busiest train stations, where public pianos are commonly found. “The show’s premise is so pure—it’s just people sitting down at a public piano and expressing themselves,” explains Meredith, founder of Audio Dept U.K. “It’s a very soft competition format. They play a piece of their choice in the middle of a busy station, right on the concourse, with people coming and going. The commuters become the audience, whether they intend to or not.
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“The technical brief from the production team was to keep things low-key and let the realness shine through. To accomplish that, we needed compact, high-performance equipment that works subtly in the background while delivering outstanding sound. That’s where DPA and Wisycom came in.”
With an upright Steinway piano arguably serving as the “star” of the show, Meredith knew it was critical to capture its sound most naturally. He mounted two DPA 4099 instrument microphones directly inside the pianos for a low noise floor, high dynamic range and practical versatility.
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He explains, “Unusually, we kept the lid of the piano closed to reduce station noise, even though it made the sound a little constrained. This allowed the pianists to play within that noisy concourse. The 4099 was perfect for isolating the piano’s tone from the outside space. It gave us a beautiful, focused sound separated from the high ambience of the station. It let the music breathe without losing detail.”
One of the biggest audio challenges the production team faced was subtle amplification to the live audiences. “We realized the piano wasn’t loud enough in some stations, so I designed a battery-powered P.A. system hidden under the stage and fed it with a Wisycom wireless system,” Meredith explains. To ensure transmission in the congested RF environments, Meredith deployed Wisycom MTK980 wireless rack transmitters and portable receivers.
