With ten television production facilities in Belgium, Videohouse has its own in-house design and systems integration division. Called ProjectBuilders, this facility recently gor to work installing two Solid State Logic C100 HDS Digital Broadcast Consoles in two DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) OB Trucks.
The choise of SSL is a continuity call for the DR engineering staff, as the company recently completed a four building complex for television, radio and live concert/events, which uses eight C200 and three C100 consoles.
‘We were fortunate to be chosen to design and build the production trucks for DR,’ says Videohouse Senior Sound Engineer/Designer, Eddy Brants. ‘We worked very closely with SSL to successfully integrate each console into a purpose-built sound room with excellent acoustics and isolation characteristics. While I’ve had several bad experiences dealing with equipment manufacturers, the experience with SSL was consistent, intelligent and fast.
‘When you put together a project where each piece of gear must work together in the same environment, it is very useful to collaborate with a company that knows how to do this and is ready, willing and able to jump in to help. SSL is that type of company.’
Offering 16-camera base stations and the eight-camera base stations, the two trucks are used for video capture and live broadcast of events ranging from sports and entertainment,to news.
‘This is my first direct experience outfitting an OB truck with an SSL console, and the experience has been very good,’ says Koen Bredael, Chief Sound Engineer at Videohouse. ‘As we are part of the Euro Media Group, our company had the opportunity to work with an SSL console that was installed in a Euro Media France OB truck, which provided excellent results. SSL consoles offer complete redundancy, and that is a very necessary factor for the DR trucks. To handle every deployment, we installed two mobile 56-channel SSL Stage Boxes in each truck. The Stage Boxes feed an SSL Morse Router in each truck, and this system works quite well.’
‘When you work with an SSL console, the layout is very logical and easy to navigate for the engineering staff and the sound is spot on,’ adds Videohouse Project Manager, Walter Vanderstukken. ‘SSL also provides extra facility support through its software options like 5.1 Upmix and Dialogue Automix. When one of the trucks was presented at a show recently, everyone was very proud to show off the console.’
More: www.solidstatelogic.com
