Czech Television Broadcasts FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in HD with Studer Vista 8

Czech Television’s HD OB Van was in operation during the entire FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Liberec, Czech Republic, between February 18th and March 1st, to the great satisfaction of the sound engineers. The only threat to the event was the possibility of no snow, which would have been a nightmare for the organizing committee, but finally 120 cm of snowfall over the period of the event meant that all the connecting cables from the truck to the remote stageboxes almost became a fixed installation until the early summer!

Higher temperatures and a thaw over the last 2 days finally allowed the crew of the HD Van to leave Liberec. "Over 50 hours of live broadcast was made on the Vista 8, an integral part of Czech Television’s first HD OB Van. All the standard features of this digital system, in particular the user-friendly intuitive operation, very good sound quality and overall system robustness passed the demanding test of this sports event under severe weather conditions.” The events were watched by nearly 200,000 spectators over the 2 week period.

“This comprehensive live application confirmed that the Studer Vista is able to meet our demanding expectations," reported Mr. Milan Gazdik, Senior Engineer of Audioengineering, Czech TV Prague and a member of the EBU Production Management Committee.

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Soundcraft Announces Lower-Priced Si2 Addition To Si Series Digital Console Family

Digital consoles seem to be freely flowing from the Soundcraft Studer team these days, as a new member of the Si Series is announced. The Soundcraft Si2 is a smaller partner to the Si3, launched only in September last year, and is bound to appeal to those wanting a compact and highly-featured digital console at a competitive price.

The Si2 comes in a smaller footprint than its bigger brother, and has 48 mic inputs mapped on 24 faders (the Si3 has 64 inputs), but this is where the differences end. The Si2, like the Si3, has four dedicated Stereo Line channels, four dedicated FX Returns from the four stereo Lexicon FX processors, 8 balanced insert sends and 8 balanced insert returns. Si2 is complete with 24 Group/Aux busses available at all times, 8 matrix busses and a full complement of monitor talkback and main bus outputs. One of the most unique and compelling features of the Si series is that every input and output has its own dedicated input (output) socket on the back of the console.

Like the Si3, the Si2 uses a combination of rotary encoders and OLED screens on every channel so the engineer mixes at source, without recourse to a central screen; an interface welcomed by many engineers since the console’s launch last year. Four assignable on-board lexicon effect engines supplement 4 stereo inputs to provide a really powerful mix package in a width of 1.4m for a UK list price of £17,950.

This package will be highly suited for installations where a smaller footprint is critical, such as theaters, houses of worship and smaller tour sound systems.

With all input and output connections and power supply on board, the Si2 can simply drop in where an existing analog console sits, utilizing existing copper cable snakes and splitter systems.

For more information and to find out what the reviewers are saying, visit www.soundcraftdigital.com.

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Soundcraft Broadcast Sales Buoyant Despite Market Conditions

Soundcraft Studer reports that sales of its analog Broadcast mixing consoles remain particularly strong, despite the economic conditions and even the transition to digital.

Sales of the long-established RM100, RM105, Series 10, Series 15 on-air desks and the production-orientated B400, B800 and BB100 desks are as strong as ever, proving that the market puts a lot of faith in choosing the right, reliable and proven products for use in its facilities.

Recent sales in the Broadcast sector have been made to City College Coventry, where 5 of the Series 10 desks have been installed in the technology suites for Media courses, and to Satellite Information Services Live who purchased 3 of the BB100 production mixers, with other analogue consoles sales to RAI and Radio Italia in Italy, TRT in Turkey and ERT in Egypt.
The company has also recently announced that many models will now be readily available from stock in standard configurations, which helps reduce delivery times for time-critical installations.

“We found that people are less willing to wait for custom-configured desks nowadays, (which we still do to order) but that most configurations used pretty-well identical modules. So we chose to stock what we consider to be the most popular configurations so that delivery times are minimized,” reports VP of Sales, Adrian Curtis.
The standard configurations typically include a mix of Mono, Stereo and Telco input modules, master module, VU meters and a timer.

“We had expected that digital consoles would make more of an impact in the simpler on-air end, but there is definitely still a very active analog sector, particularly in some OB applications where budgets and space are often tight” says Curtis. “Being able to offer fast deliveries on these consoles has definitely been well received by our customers.”

“Having said that, the Soundcraft® Vi Series of digital consoles, particularly the compact Soundcraft Vi4, has found favor in studios and the larger OB trucks recently, notable installations include Denmark’s TV2 OB truck, RAI in Italy, SWR in Germany, VRT in Belgium, TVE in Spain, and Russia’s RUR TV and RTR. The 72-input capacity of the Vi4, coupled with the broadcast-friendly remote stagebox and Vistonics II user interface, offers a great package for many applications requiring digital solutions. In these low-light environments, having the illuminated Soundcraft FaderGlow™ and Vistonics screens are a major advantage for operators.”

The Vi Series also has optional interface cards which make it particularly useful in HD trucks, such as an SDI de-embedder/embedder card, and a Dolby D/E decoder card, which help to save cost, space and weight. Other broadcast-specific functions include a high bus count for cleanfeed outputs, and configurable GPIO connections for fader starts, signalling etc.

Full details at www.soundcraft.com

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