New Zealand’s Māori Television Upgrades Its Broadcast Facility with HARMAN’s Studer Vista 5 M3 and OnAir Consoles

NEWMARKET, New Zealand – Māori Television provides a range of local and international programming for New Zealand’s audiences across the country and online. Founded in 2004, the station is dedicated to the revitalization and normalization of the Māori language and culture through high-quality, readily accessible programming in both Māori and English. Reflecting its commitment to quality, Māori Television recently upgraded its studios with the addition of HARMAN’s Studer Vista 5 M3 and OnAir 2500 digital consoles.

HARMAN Professional New Zealand distributor Jands Ltd. installed the 32-fader Vista 5 M3 and 12-fader OnAir 2500 consoles in Māori Television studios. The studio needed to replace its aging analogue mixing desks and make the move to digital. They wanted consoles that were flexible and easy to use. “Our studios are used for a variety of shows, including live news and current affairs programs, talk shows, sports programming and more,” said Kane Dickie, sound team leader. “One of the most challenging requirements is doing the sound for a live music show that requires mixing multiple hosts talking at once plus a live band.”

Māori Television wanted to avoid having to patch the consoles into external effects devices, and chose the Studer consoles because they had enough built-in effects to handle all the processing for all the shows that are produced at Māori Television. Ease of use was equally important – “we wanted consoles that were intuitive to use, so that most of the people in our studio would be able to operate them.” In addition, the consoles had to be able to link together so they could share sources between Māori Televisions two broadcast studios. The Vista 5 M3 offers access of up to 240 channels, ensuring the station would have all the inputs it needs. Along with the Vista 5 M3 and On Air 2500, Māori Television purchased three Studer Compact Stagebox expansion units, a 32-in/16-out and two 16-in/16-out models.

Before Māori TV purchased them, Jands set up the complete system on their premises to allow Kane and his team to try them out. The Māori TV staff took to the consoles immediately, giving high marks to the consoles’ easy, fast and responsive operation, accessible control layouts, convenient Vistonics™ and Touch’n’Action color touch screens, and variety of useful built-in effects. “

Now that the Vista 5 M3 and On Air 2500 are up and running at Māori Television, Kane confirms their initial positive experience with the consoles at Jands. “The transition from analogue to digital consoles went smoothly. In addition to doing everything we need them to and then some, we’ve noticed that the Studer consoles’ preamps have made all of our mics sound much cleaner. In addition, all of the old analogue buzz we could never get rid of in the past has disappeared.” In Māori it’s called “Kia Tika” – being professional and maintaining high standards. It’s one of Māori Television’s core values, and the Studer Vista 5 M3 and On Air 2500 reflect the station’s commitment to “Kia Tika.”

HARMAN designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of infotainment and audio solutions for the automotive, consumer, and professional markets. It is a recognized world leader across its customer segments with premium brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, and Mark Levinson® and leading-edge connectivity, safety and audio technologies. The Company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems. HARMAN has a workforce of 14,800 people across the Americas, Europe, and Asia and reported sales of $4.7 billion for the last twelve months ended December 31, 2013.

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Euro Media’s new HARMAN Studer Vista 5 M3 Provides “Haute Cuisine” for TV Show

PARIS, France – Audiopole, the French distributor for HARMAN’s Studer, has supplied the country’s first Vista 5 M3 to audiovisual technical services provider, Euro Media, for use on a popular TV program. It forms the hub of a technical package that has taken up a residency in a converted studio in a Paris industrial building. The site of a former factory, it is now used to host C à vous (http://www.france5.fr/emissions/c-a-vous), a live, primetime program about cuisine, broadcast by France 5, in which guests join host Anne-Sophie Lapix “at home.” Euro Media also supplied the production company with the necessary technicians.

The daily access prime time program, presented by Anne-Sophie Lapix, and featuring food critics (and guest chefs preparing dinner in the studio kitchen), is filmed in a loft where it occupies a fixed set. The building itself has been converted from its original use into a fully equipped apartment on one floor, complete with a kitchen and its own dedicated video and audio production areas. Audiopole director Jean-Philippe Blanchard describes it as “a highly credible studio facility.”

However, space in the audio control room is limited and Euro Media required a large-capacity console in a reasonably compact footprint. The new Vista 5 M3 was the perfect tool. The Vista 5 M3 includes the special TM7 touch screen loudness metering—a perfect complement to the Vistonics™ touchscreen user interface.

The production team was already familiar with the Vista platform and according to Blanchard, the team is really happy with the upgrades.

“The Vista 5 M3 is a sensible use of their budget—and it’s the first sale of this console in France,” Blanchard said. “They particularly like the FaderGlow™ feature, and they are really enjoying using the integrated loudness bar graph.” The console is used in conjunction with Studer’s VistaMix, which is perfect for multi-participant, unscripted shows such as this.

This is because programs of this nature would inherently suffer from both microphone spill and background noise, as active mics are successively added to the mix. Consequently, the overall sound quality deteriorates, leading to decreased intelligibility and phase distortion.

Instead of needing to manually adjust all the faders each time, VistaMix automatically mimics the action of a human operator so that 'talking' mic gain can be increased at lightning speed while reducing gain for all others—ensuring a clean and balanced mix.

“In this situation VistaMix provides them with a perfect solution,” Blanchard concluded.

HARMAN (www.harman.com) designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment solutions for the automotive, consumer and professional markets – supported by 15 leading brands, including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon® and Mark Levinson®. The Company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems. HARMAN has a workforce of 14,600 people across the Americas, Europe, and Asia and reported sales of $4.5 billion for the last twelve months ended September 30, 2013.

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