Driven by the emergence of HD-TV and the commissioning of new studio and OB facilities, Lawo has reported the sale of ten digital audio consoles to Korean broadcasters.
Three of the new customers have found the Lawo solution in a joint enterprise. Privately-owned, the local broadcast stations JIBS in Jeju Island, TBC in DaeGu and KBC in Kwang-ju worked together on researching and testing high-definition systems for news and production studios. Along with Soundfox International, the broadcasters settled on the mc²56 to upgrade control rooms handling daily news and entertainment programming. All three have selected 32-fader consoles, specified with Dallis I/O frame and 8192x8192 router.
KBC has linked its mc²56 with two studios, each fitted with a Dallis I/O frame and connected to the HD core. The studios are located more than 100m from the control room, and have been linked by a single fibre-optic cable running Madi from the stageboxes to the HD-SDI card in the Dallis unit – a more economical set-up than ‘contentional’ cabling.
‘The main requirement for all three broadcasters was for system stability and redundancy, and we also value Lawo’s guarantee of technical support,’ says Dae sik Kim from TBC. ‘This is important as it is not easy to replace equipment here in our local areas. We can use it for live as well as recording production, which is a great benefit for us.’
Two further mc²56 consoles have also been installed by Soundfox International – in the news studios of Edaily TV in Seoul, a channel providing stock trading information on Korean cable TV. Edaily is making the move to HD, and has commissioned identical 32-fader consoles, with redundant 8192x8192 routers and control servers. These are the first Lawo desks for Edaily TV. ‘We carefully considered the features and stability of consoles from each manufacturer, and finally we found the right audio mixing system for our live news studio,’ says project leader, Kim Hyung Man. ‘The mc²56 is delivering a very satisfying performance in both the live news and the production news environments.’
Based in Seoul, Korea’s largest online retailer GS Home Shopping is one of the most successful in the world, and has been using Lawo’s mc²66 classic and MkII designs for several years, and recently added a third TV production studio with a further Lawo console, to be used in a networked configuration.
The 40-fader mc²66, which offers 128 channels of full DSP, and a 8192x8192 HD core, was chosen for its interactive signal processing system and flexible configuration. ‘The GS team could add the functions they wanted to the system,’ says Peter Moh, CEO of Soundfox International. ‘For example customising the GPIO control function, specifying port redundancy on the Dallis I/O frames, and including seven HD/SDI interfaces for the video server. Now the network is complete, I/Os can be shared across all three control rooms.’
Lawo’s mc²66 has been picked for two new OB vehicles. MBC C&I has replaced an analogue console in its #3 TV OB with a 32-fader mc²66, offering 218 DSP channels and redundant DSP. This vehicle will be used on a variety of programme productions, from drama to sports events and concerts. The 12m van has a separate audio booth for the Lawo console, which features a redundant router and control system, Dallis master board and DSP board. With two stageboxes, the system can provide 72 channels of mic/line input, 24-channel line in and 48-channel line out, plus 32 channels of AES I/O.
The audio engineer in charge of the MBC project draws on his experience in Kocca DMS studios, a government-owned facility which installed one of the first mc²66 consoles, the MkI: ‘When MBC’s partner companies started demanding a more complex production workflow to handle 5.1 surround and multitrack recordings, our old analogue console could not support them,’ says Min su Na. ‘So I decided to specify this console for the OBV, because it is a very flexible and intuitive design, and will support the variety of productions that we will do in the future.’
Another new OB van is on the road in Seoul. jTBC is a new broadcaster for cable TV; the JoongAng Media Network has been awarded a general programming license and is expected to go on air this year. Currently, they are fitting two 32-fader mc²66 consoles into a Madi network at their studio production facilities and a 24-fader model into a new OBV. The OB set-up is similar in design to that of MBC C&I, both of them specified by Soundfox International. More details to come from jTBC when the station goes live.
More: www.lawo.de
