Net TV brings Midas back in-house
Published: ASIA
INDONESIA: Having successfully taken to the road with its first OB vehicle in early 2015, Indonesian free-to-air television broadcaster, Net TV, has adopted many of the products condensed into the 12m chassis to three new live studios at its Jakarta-Selatan headquarters. An 88-channel Midas Pro9 control surface was adopted to handle the audio mix for the many live TV shows, concerts and sporting events being covered locally throughout Java, Sumatra and Bali.
‘I’ve always loved the Midas sound, especially the warmth of their preamps,’ explained Net TV’s audio engineer supervisor Yan Ferdian. ‘The Midas Pro9 has proved to be very reliable and durable on our travels, so it made perfect sense to equip our live studios with compatible work surfaces. Additionally, we are familiar with the analogue-friendly layout and its many features that allow us to adopt either analogue or AES50 digital inputs.’
Since its launch in 2013, Net TV was the first HD station in the archipelago that embraced the internet as one of its main weapons in driving browsers to its scheduled channels via Google’s YouTube. The expanded facility demonstrates a commitment to investing in unique and quality programming that will in turn continue to increase viewing figures. A central control room on the second level serves as a hub for the new three studios. The larger live studio can seat an audience of up to 500 guests and for the purposes of live music productions taking place in here, another Midas Pro9 console has been assigned for FOH and monitor duties. A flown L-R L-Acoustics Arcs WiFo loudspeaker system combines two Arcs Wide and two Arcs Focus cabinets together with two SB15 subwoofers per side, whilst two per side groundstacked SB18 subwoofers further enhance the low frequencies.
The two smaller ‘black box’ style theatres rely on Midas Pro1 and Midas Pro2 consoles for their productions. ‘We need to be very flexible in terms of where we can set up the audio in both rooms, so portability was a requirement,’ explained audio engineer Andhika Prabowo. ‘We host a variety of shows in both of these rooms, sometimes with a live audience.’ Operating on the digital AES50 protocol, all three live studios are connected to the venue’s infrastructure courtesy of localised DL371 remote processing engines. These in turn are connected to the networked system of I/O devices via Cat-5e cabling, hosting all the data, video, communications and camera connections.
From the control room, the engineers can monitor the performances in all three studios from a master Midas ProX console. ‘It’s the first ProX console that we have sold here in Indonesia,’ stated PT Gracia Auvindo’s Adi Widjaya. ‘Net TV demanded this on account of the 144 inputs it can handle, especially when two or more bands are playing on one night. In addition, it can provide 72 auxiliaries and 24 matrices, which is more than enough.’ An adjacent total consisting of eight DL231 splitters combine the inputs from the Pro1, Pro 2 and Pro9 consoles, including the Pro9 in the OB vehicle that can also be connected to the adjacent studio wall. All five consoles can simultaneously route the broadcast feeds to the ProX, whilst mixing their individual shows.
Low latency SuperMAC (AES50-Compliant) and HyperMAC digital audio networking technologies provide high channel counts, phase-aligned networked clock distribution and redundancy throughout the facility. The ProX HyperMAC router provides a dual redundant snake connection to the Neutron audio system engine with a bandwidth of 192 bidirectional channels of 96kHz 24-bit digital audio. ‘We looked at the other best of performance consoles, but selected Midas on account its 96kHz capabilities – the others were all 48kHz,’ furthered Mr Prabowo. The ProX mix is created using Focal CM65 monitors, whilst Waves plugins provide a full suite of mastering software options via the patchbay.
Having successfully road-tested Sennheiser EM2050 wireless and Clear-Com communications on the OB vehicle, the Net TV engineers opted for the same combination to be integrated into the studio design. DK Technologies’ MSD100C meter measures audio peak, loudness levels, phase correlation and amplitude. The control room video production suite relies upon a Grass Valley 192-input/96-output Kerrera production switcher to deliver multiformat content including 1080p and 4K. Soap operas never appear on the Net TV’s programming schedules, nor will they ever be. Having differentiated itself by stimulating its potential audience of 300 million Indonesians with its mix of sports, talk shows and music, the new kid on the block has invested heavily in order to raise the broadcasting stakes.’