Korean broadcasters order 10 Lawo consoles
Published: ASIA
KOREA: Over the past six months, Lawo reports that a diverse group of TV news and entertainment programme makers have between them purchased 10 Lawo digital audio consoles in Seoul and other Korean cities.
Together with main contractor Soundfox International, local broadcast stations JIBS in Jeju Island, TBC in DaeGu and KBC in Kwang-ju, chose the mc²56 model as an upgrade solution for their control rooms, which handle daily news and entertainment programming. All three have selected a 32-fader console, specified with a Dallis I/O frame and a 8192x8192 router.
KBC has linked its mc²56 with two studios, each fitted with a Dallis I/O frame and connected to the HD core. The studios are located more than 100m from the control room, and have been linked by a single fibre optic cable running Madi from the stageboxes to the HD-SDI card in the Dallis unit.
‘The main requirement for all three broadcasters was for system stability and redundancy, and we also value Lawo’s guarantee of technical support,’ explained TBC’s Dae sik Kim. ‘This is important as it is not easy to replace equipment here in our local areas.’
Agreeing with Mr Ko and Mr Lee of JIBS, Mr Kim stated that ‘the versatile configuration of the mc²56 makes it very useful. We can use it for live as well as recording production, which is a great benefit for us’.
Meanwhile, Soundfox International has installed two mc²56 consoles with redundant 8192x8192 routers and control servers in the news studios of Edaily TV in Seoul, a channel providing stock trading information on Korean cable TV.
‘We carefully considered the features and stability of consoles from each manufacturer, and finally we found the right audio mixing system for our live news studio,’ said project leader Kim Hyung Man. ‘The mc²56 is delivering a very satisfying performance in both the live news and the production news environments.’
Also installing Lawo products in 2011 was Korean online retailer GS Home Shopping. Opening its third TV production studio this year, a 40-fader mc²66 was selected for its interactive signal processing system and flexible configuration.
‘The GS team can add the functions they want to the system and have found the channel display and user interface to be highly intuitive and useful,’ explained Peter Moh, CEO of Soundfox International.
Two mc²66 consoles meanwhile, have been purchased by MBC C&I, one of which replacing an analogue console in the broadcaster’s #3 TV OBV. The 12m van has a separate audio booth for the Lawo console, which features a redundant router and control system, Dallis master board and DSP board.
The audio engineer in charge of the MBC project commented on his experience in Kocca DMS studios, a government-owned facility that installed one of the first mc²66 consoles – the MkI. ‘When MBC’s partner companies started demanding a more complex production workflow to handle 5.1 surround and multi-track recordings, our old analogue console could not support them,’ Min su Na explained. ‘So I decided to specify this console for the OBV, because it is a very flexible and intuitive design, and will support the variety of productions that we will do in the future.’
Lastly, jTBC, a new Seoul-based broadcaster for cable TV, (the JoongAng Media Network) is in the process of fitting two 32-fader mc²66 consoles into a Madi network at its studio production facilities, and a 24-fader model into its new OBV. The OB set-up is similar in design to that of MBC C&I, both of them specified by Soundfox International.