Two DR OB trucks installed with SSL C100 HDS consoles

ProjectBuilders, the design and systems integration division of Videohouse, a company that manages 10 television production facilities in Belgium, has installed two Solid State Logic C100 HDS Digital Broadcast Consoles in two DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) OB Trucks.

Choosing SSL for the OB trucks represents continuity for the DR engineering staff as DR recently completed a massive, four building, 133,000 square meter complex for television, radio and live concert/events featuring eight C200 and three C100 consoles.

“We were fortunate to be chosen to design and build the production trucks for DR,” says Eddy Brants, senior sound engineer/designer for Videohouse. “We worked very closely with SSL to successfully integrate each console into a purpose-built sound room with excellent acoustics and isolation characteristics. It was great working with SSL at every turn of this project. While I’ve had several bad experiences dealing with equipment manufacturers, the experience with SSL was consistent, intelligent and fast. When you put together a project where each piece of gear must work together in the same environment, it is very useful to collaborate with a company that knows how to do this and is ready, willing and able to jump in to help. SSL is that type of company.”

Of the two OB trucks designed for DR Byen, one offers 16-camera base stations and the other 8-camera base stations. Both are used for video capture and live broadcast of events in the region, ranging from sports, to entertainment, to news.

“This is my first direct experience outfitting an OB truck with an SSL console, and the experience has been very good,” says Koen Bredael, chief sound engineer for Videohouse. “As we are part of the Euro Media Group, our company had the opportunity to work with an SSL console that was installed in a Euro Media France OB truck, which provided excellent results. SSL produces consoles that offer complete redundancy, and that is a very necessary factor for the DR trucks. To handle every deployment situation, we installed two mobile 56-channel SSL Stage Boxes in each truck. The Stage Boxes feed an SSL MORSE Router in each truck, and this system works quite well.”