Russia’s NTV Mobile studio installs Calrec Audio Artemis Light console
As part of its transition to digital broadcasting, Russian national broadcaster NTV has installed a Calrec Audio Artemis Light console in NTV Mobile, a new Moscow-based flexible production studio. The NTV Mobile operation complements NTV’s traditional studios and outside broadcast (OB) trucks using modular equipment in flight cases that can be reconfigured to suit the needs of different types of live productions. NTV Mobile has been using the new console primarily on the show “Taken and Shown,” which plays out live on air every evening, but the Artemis Light can be moved quickly to accommodate live programming in different locations.“We wanted a mobile studio design that we could move and reconfigure at a moment’s notice. It required that each flight case have minimal interconnections with the others, which made the job very complex,” says freelance engineer Yuriy Kirinov, who designed and integrated the project for Russian systems integrator OKNO-TV, a Calrec partner. “We looked for an audio console that would be flexible enough to integrate flawlessly into such a setup and technically sophisticated enough to deliver the highest quality of sound. Calrec satisfied these requirements and more.”
NTV installed a 48-fader Artemis Light console with two stage boxes, each with 32 analog/AES interfaces connected by fiber to the main frame via Calrec’s Hydra2 plug-and-play audio routing system, which supports AES, analog, and MADI interfaces in the main rack.
During the selection process, NTV compared the technical and ergonomic characteristics of a number of high-level digital audio consoles. The Artemis Light console’s sound quality and reliability — key factors in the selection process because both are critical when broadcasting live events — put it above the competition. Full redundancy was also important, as were the unit’s compact size and networking capability, which were crucial to the setup’s mobility. A user-friendly interface made it easy for operators to learn to use.
“We’re excited to be working with NTV partly because of this novel approach they’re taking to live production,” said Michael Reddick, European sales manager, Calrec Audio. “The NTV Mobile setup is different from an outside broadcast truck and is the first such project we’ve done in Russia.”