New STB OB truck equipped with Lawo console

Ukraine: Ukrainian broadcaster STB Worldwide Television, based in Kiev, has chosen a Lawo mc²56 digital audio console for its latest OB vehicle. Developed in conjunction with integrator TVC Lithuania, the STB truck features a 16+16C+16 frame console, offering 240 channels of DSP.

Destined more for the lE rather than the sports market, this is the first mobile vehicle for STB, whose work includes producing localised versions of ‘X Factor’ and ‘Ukraine’s Got Talent’.

The new OB van is a 12m long expander, and STB’s chief sound engineer Ivan Zabaluiev and his deputy Anton Fedorov conducted extensive tests of audio consoles before settling on the 48-fader Lawo mc²56 as the most flexible, the most cost-efficient and the one with the feature set best suited to their shows.

The mc²56 console is fitted with five DSP cards, one of which is used for redundancy, and two router cards. STB has five DALLIS stageboxes offering different I/O configurations. “We can work with four broadcast positions at the same time, sharing signals between the stages,” explains Fedorov,“ and the Lawo technology permits very flexible routing, down all fibre connection.

Fedorov highlights the huge routing matrix (offering 3072×3072 crosspoints) and the innovative operating system; his colleague Ivan Zabaluiev points out Lawo’s long experience of designing on-board audio facilities for OB trucks. “There’s no question that we have found that the sound engineer’s job has been made much easier by the function set offered by this console.”