MIRA Mobile using Calrec consoles for wealth of sports events
North American outside broadcasting (OB) giant MIRA Mobile Television has purchased two more Calrec Omega digital audio consoles for two of its OB trucks. The purchase brings MIRA’s total number of Calrec desks to seven, making Calrec the dominant audio-console brand in its fleet.
The trucks with the recently installed Omega consoles cover sports in the region and are scheduled to work with Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, and the National Football League over the next month.
“The improvement over the previously installed audio consoles in these trucks is a quantum leap,” says Bill Duncan, director of engineering for MIRA Mobile. “Even something as simple as flexible GPI control was not possible with the previous consoles. The Calrec consoles make managing a 5.1 production much more convenient, almost easy. And with the previous consoles weighing in at about 600 pounds, we believe the Omega consoles have significantly lowered the weight of each trailer, which is always a critical concern when considering equipment purchases in the OB market.”
With the Omega consoles, MIRA Mobile now has AES and MADI I/O capability, the ability to route signals and save setup files within the console, and a dramatic increase in the number of inputs and outputs.
One of the consoles, which has a 128 x 128 MADI interface, 96 x 96 AES I/O, and 96 x 96 analogue I/O, was installed in truck M-5 in December 2012 and went on to cover professional basketball games, followed by college basketball. The second console, which has 128 x 128 AES I/O and 96 x 96 analogue I/O, was installed in truck M-4 in June and immediately covered international soccer matches.
The two Omega desks join five other Calrec digital audio consoles in MIRA Mobile’s nine-truck fleet. MIRA Mobile, which is the production mobile provider for the Pac-12 Networks, relies extensively on Calrec consoles — especially those with integrated Bluefin2 HDSP and Hydra2 audio-routing technologies — because of their router sizes, scalability, networkability, and number of processing paths. Duncan cites familiarity and comfort, customer service, reliability, market acceptance, and an extensive pool of operators among the many reasons MIRA continually chooses Calrec.
“We installed the latest consoles ourselves under a very tight timeline, but we were comfortable enough with the equipment that we knew we could do it, especially given the impressive degree of support we always get from Calrec,” Duncan said. “Perhaps over time we will be fortunate enough to have an all-Calrec fleet, not just because of the overwhelming market share that Calrec enjoys in our industry, but also, and more important, because of our experience and the relationship we have fostered with Calrec.”