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The story
Former AKB48 member Minami Takahashi appeared on Nippon TV’s “Ueda to Onna ga Hoeru Yoru” (Ueda and the Howling Women), airing on the 14th, alongside former HKT48 member Miku Tanaka. During the show, a junior idol brought up the idol-world “taboo” topic of “live mics” versus “dead mics,” prompting Takahashi to cut her off with “What are you saying?!” On a 5channel thread, the discussion expanded into whether it’s even technically possible to keep every performer’s mic live during large group stages, with posters offering technical explanations about how the digitization of wireless mics has eliminated worries about signal interference, name-checking artists known for genuine live singing like Yurina Hirate and M!LK, and mixing surprise at lip-syncing with technical footnotes.
Minami Takahashi stops junior idol who touched on the idol world’s “taboo”: “Stop it! What are you saying?!”
Former AKB48 member and talent Minami Takahashi (35) appeared on Nippon TV’s “Ueda to Onna ga Hoeru Yoru” (Wednesdays, 9:00 PM), airing on the 14th, where she stepped in to stop a junior idol from touching on an industry “taboo.”
Former HKT48 member and talent Miku Tanaka also appeared as a guest on this episode.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Genuine live singing among idols is basically just a Hello! Project thing.
They'll at least layer their own vocals over the track (sing live on top of the playback).
I've been seeing M!LK a lot lately, and it was all live singing.
The other Stardust Promotion groups were the same.
In YES Tokyo, only the members who are actually singing even hold a mic.
What kind of PA setup do you think could even handle that?
I'm Ikkokudo — please take me on as your disciple (a recurring meme format of gushing over someone's skill and begging to become their apprentice)
For real? That's amazing.
That's what you'd expect from a charismatic idol.
A legend in idol history.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen to their names if Shugo Maki and Maki Goto ever got married (there'd be way too many "Makis").
I thought of Hama Mike 😎🤏 (a hardboiled detective character played by Tadanobu Asano — another "Mike" pun)
does AKB even have live mics??
The CD recordings are supposed to feature different members each time, but it always sounds exactly the same to me.
Mics are off during the song itself, and only switched on for the MC segments before and after.
You could turn this into a 4-panel comic strip.
It's basically fraud.
Well, the idol business itself is basically a scam to begin with.
Maybe that number's gone up a bit since then.
If it's just AKB alone that's one thing, but when they're sharing a stage with other groups, the whole setup is predetermined.
They're probably annoyed at being accused of lip-syncing or just phoning it in.
Most groups actually sing live.
Now that Perfume's gone on hiatus, pretty much the only major acts still lip-syncing are the Yasushi Akimoto-produced groups.
With that many people on stage,
it's physically impossible.
The number of people isn't really the issue.
Wireless mic signals are digital now, so you don't have to worry about interference even running around 40 of them at once.
The limiters kick in automatically too.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
In large idol groups that sing and dance simultaneously, keeping every member’s mic live at all times tends to produce muffled or distorted audio due to handling noise and movement, so switching mics on and off part-by-part has long been standard practice. This is what’s known as a “dead mic,” and it doesn’t necessarily mean the whole performance is lip-synced. Where opinions in the thread diverged was over how much this practice should be considered “normal” — some posters were surprised to learn about it for the first time, while others calmly explained the realities of PA (sound reinforcement) work. The digitization of wireless mics, which has made it easier to run many channels simultaneously, is one reason criticism of lip-syncing has softened compared to the past. That said, the TV segment the article is based on never specified which group or which moment it was referring to, so it’s worth keeping in mind that exactly what Minami Takahashi was reacting to when she called it a “taboo” remains unclear without watching the broadcast itself.
*This article is an excerpt and summary based on the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] “There are live mics, and there are dead mics” — Minami Takahashi stops junior idol who touched on idol-world taboo: “What are you saying?!”.”
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