Portuguese broadcaster Televisão Independente has installed a Solid State Logic System T broadcast platform at its multi-studio facility in Lisbon, comprising an S500 console with redundant TE2 Tempest Engines and various network I/O interfaces.
System T has been integrated into the TVI production facility’s IP architecture, enabling it to operate with any of the plant’s existing studios. Multiple instances of SSL’s Tempest Control App (TCA) provide additional control options for audio operators or TVI’s engineering team.
‘System T was one of the few systems in the market that matched our demands in terms of sound quality, usability and redundancy,’ says Ricardo Lima, Architecture & New Projects, Broadcast IT at the Technology Directorate for Media Capital, TVI’s owner. ‘To accomplish a well-organised, expandable and efficient audio network around our facility the choice had to be IP-driven for the audio, and the software components had to be easy to use and quickly deployable in CoTS hardware or virtual machines. System T’s integration with Dante was a key consideration in accommodating the various sources and destinations in the studios, control rooms, newsrooms and post rooms.’
System integrator Dec.Imagen – SSL’s integrator in Portugal led by Director General José Rafael Adegas – supplied the System T platform, which includes a modular 3.5-bay S500 console with dual TE2 DSP engines, three Network I/O SB 8.8 SuperAnalogue mic/line stageboxes plus a single A16.D16 SuperAnalogue/AES3 unit to interface with the Dante network, and a Fader Tile, providing familiar hardware controls for the TCA positions.
A pair of Network I/O D64 AES-to-Dante interfaces and an HC Bridge SRC high-capacity AoIP interface also integrate System T with the facility’s ST 2110 infrastructure and existing equipment.
‘Operators quickly understand the concepts and can perform some very important configurations that usually are only available at the engineering level, such as the creation or modification of events – GPIOs, Midi integration and button or fader actions – that are crucial to configuration scenarios such as ours,’ Lima reports.
‘Also, the elasticity of the Tempest Engines allows us to allocate audio paths and processing resources dynamically, in real-time. Further, TE2 processors can be software licensed temporarily to give us up to 800 available DSP audio paths when we need it.
‘The seamless transition between audio engines – main and backup – and a backup TCA on the side, are some of the features most valued by audio engineers, offering them robust and trustworthy redundancies to steer their concentration away from potential problems,’ he adds.
The System T console, associated interfaces and control elements are installed in a new audio control room that is similar to the broadcaster’s existing facilities in terms of equipment placement and layout. ‘Despite the fact that the technology and capabilities of this new control room are unmatched,’ Lima says, ‘in terms of layout, the intention was to give the audio engineers a sense of familiarity for a more efficient and productive environment.’
The great majority of audio sources in the plant are always present on the Dante network and ready to be mixed. ‘Our S500 targets its own embedders, so the SSL system can create an independent production and work standalone or side-by-side with our current control rooms,’ Lima says. When operating another control room, ‘There are specific destinations that need to be replaced from their current sources to the System T in that case, and broadcast control system is used to manage connections to other control rooms.’
Two instances of TCA are present on the network. One is running on a hardware PC with a touchscreen monitor in the new audio control room. It can be used, for example, as an extension of the S500 itself, to provide an additional operator position, additional metering displays or to manage the built-in FX Rack, scene automation or set-up functionality. A second TCA instance is available on a virtual machine in high availability mode, that may be accessed anywhere in the facility or even remotely. This provides a permanently available redundant control position that can be instantly switched to, with the same processing feature-set and showfile compatibility as the S500, while targeting the same pair of Tempest Engines.
More: www.solidstatelogic.com
