Through its independent television and radio network, the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) serves Middle East and North Africa audiences with 24-hour news, movies and music, as well as entertainment for Arab women, children and general family entertainment. Since 2012, the broadcaster has been upgrading the audio systems in its Dubai and Cairo studios.
‘With the increasing complexity of our technical infrastructures and our dedication to providing the highest-quality television programming, we knew it was crucial to stay ahead of the technology curve,’ says MBS Broadcast Manager, Raed Bacho. ‘Product continuity was a top priority, so we decided early on that settling on a single manufacturer would be the ideal solution.’
To meet its particular needs, MBC looked to GSL Professional, who recommended Studer’s Vista Series digital mixing consoles: ‘We have had a very long, solid relationship with Studer, having used their products since 2002 when our Dubai Media Center studios opened,’ Bacho says. ‘The products have shown great stability along with the flexibility needed for workflow, and console architecture was also something that set Studer apart from the competition.’
MBC’s first step was the purchase of a 62-fader Vista 9 for its Al Arabiya news channel. Based in Dubai Media City, Al Arabiya is a free-to-air channel, providing news, current affairs, business and financial markets, sports, talk shows and documentaries. A year later, in 2013, MBC upgraded its control rooms at MBC 1, a free-to-air, pan-Arab general television channel, also based in Dubai Media City. For this facility, GSL Professional supplied two Studer Vista 9 consoles, one with 52 faders and the other with 62.
With Vista 9 consoles now in three main control rooms in Dubai Media City, and with each control room serving long hours of news and other programming, MBC upgraded the Dubai Media City-based control room of its MBC 3 studios, opting for a 32-fader Studer Vista 1. ‘Our familiarity with the Vista 9 made the Vista 1 a great fit for our upgrade at MBC 3,’ says Sound Engineers Supervisor, Basheer Saad.
In 2014, MBC added a 32-fader Vista 1 console to its Dubai Media City studios for Al Hadath, a free-to-air news and current affairs satellite channel, which operates as an extension of Al Arabiya. In addition, MBC’s news bureau in Cairo is also equipped with a 32-fader Vista 1. Using Studer D21m I/O systems, MBC has connected each of the consoles in its Dubai Media City studios via Madi to share sources and provide redundancy.
Since the Vista 9 and Vista 1 consoles share the same platform, switching between the studios is straightforward for operators. In addition, with an upgrade to Vista software v4.9, MBC has taken up Studer’s VistaMix, an automated microphone mixing algorithm based on gain sharing for simplifying the mixing task at multi-contributor events. ‘VistaMix is a great tool to reduce the noise coming from the newsroom, which is an open area, in talk show programmes with multiple presenters and guests on the air,’ Saad observes.
MBC has also benefited from Studer’s proprietary FaderGlow technology, which illuminates each fader in the colour relating to the relevant function, creating an instant overview of console status: ‘FaderGlow is so handy when we work live in our 24-hour news station,’ Saad says. ‘These types of features contribute to the ease of use of the Studer consoles and enabled our sound engineers to adapt quickly to the technology.’
‘Studer has met our needs so far, as evidenced by the fact that we have continued to upgrade our studios with Vista consoles,’ Bacho adds. ‘We have had great experience with Studer in terms of audio quality, workflow and support.
