L’Equipe goes modular with Calrec audio consoles

French sports channel L’Equipe has installed two new audio consoles from Calrec and is using them for live mixing and commentary across cycling, biathlons, rallying, judo, and the Pétanque Championships.

A 36+8 Summa and a Brio36 have been added to the main and secondary control rooms within L’Equipe’s two studios.

Alexis Bougault, audio technical manager at systems integrator Euromedia oversaw the design and implementation of the project.

Bougault acknowledged that his company wanted to offer the client something that was “modular and that was therefore easily expandable”

“L’Equipe is continually growing so this was important,” he said. “The consoles work without complex ongoing configuration with the addition of other interfaces easy to achieve.”

Both control rooms, commentary booths and intercom system and consoles are connected via a Dante network.

The two consoles are additionally connected via a Calrec Hydra 2 network with a modular rack. The Summa has two Dante cards with one for the Brio, with Hydra 2 allowing shared console resources with up to 512 channels per link.

Patrick Vautier, technical manager with L’Equipe, said: “The combination of the Summa and Brio36 work perfectly because they use the same software that’s very popular with the L’Equipe team. Operators are often called to work in either control room so this is crucial. With features easily accessed via a touch screen, the consoles are intuitive and very refined to use.”

The L’Equipe sports TV channel is part of the French sports news media company L’Equipe 24/24.

The integration was handled by systems integrator Euromedia with assistance from Calrec’s French distributor, Audiopole. The latter also provided training.